Dear Loyola community,
I love the Easter Vigil, the Mass that started after sundown yesterday. It was long (and, for me, the longer the better). It was highly symbolic–involving dark and light, fire and water, bells and incense, bread and wine.
It can include up to 9 (!), often lengthy, readings from Scripture. I love the second to last reading, Romans 6:3-11, in which St. Paul asks incredulously, “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”
So, Easter is about baptism. It’s the ancient celebration at which people are baptized and enter the Church. In some sense, it’s more for those about to be baptized than for those of us already baptized.
That reading continues, “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead…, we too might live in newness of life.”
Like water, baptism is both death-dealing and life-giving. Especially in churches with large baptismal pools, the baptism experience symbolizes drowning an old way of life and rising to share Christ’s new life, which is a sharing in God’s very life.
To be sure, the already baptized can benefit from the Easter emphasis on baptism. It reminds us that the life of faith is not the passive reception of grace. Baptism transforms all of us, like Christ, into priests, prophets, and leaders.
That is, baptism empowers all the faithful to announce with words and lives the Good News of God’s unfailing love and to model Jesus’ commitment to mercy and justice, especially for the most marginalized people and creatures.
May this Easter season be an opportunity for all of us in our own ways to give expression to this Good News.
Tom Ryan, Ph.D.
Interim Vice President for Mission and Identity
