Friends, having returned from an amazing opportunity to speak at the LA Religious Education Congress alongside some of my Notre Dame professors, I’m back to the work of studying and synthesizing theology. This week’s assignment asks us to apply our reading from The Bible and the Liturgy by Father Jean Danielou to a pastoral talk. This book was highly accessible, and a must read for anyone who enjoys seeing connections between the Old and New Testaments. Enjoy!
PROMPT: You’ve been invited to give a talk to those recently initiated (baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist) at the Easter Vigil. The focus of your talk is on the meaning of these three sacraments for the rest of Christian life. Using what you learned from Daniélou around these sacraments, what would you say?
“May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.”[1] You likely heard these words pronounced at the beginning of the Easter Vigil, perhaps outside your church, around the blazing Easter fire. Fire evokes the Johannine image of the light of Christ dispelling darkness: “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1:5). Once the Paschal Candle is lit from the Easter fire, the priest and faithful process into the church with the candle. In this, we recall the continuity of God’s action in salvation history, namely, as Israel was guided through the night by a pillar of fire (Ex 13:21-22), Christians follow the risen Christ represented by the paschal flame.
As newly initiated Catholics, you have received Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist. Through these sacraments, you enter into “a history proceeding from Christ,” in which Christ, “the guide rope of salvation” pulls humanity to the shore of God’s eternity. (Ratzinger, p. 163-64). Father Jean Daniélou, SJ, wrote that in ancient Christianity, the sacraments were “essential events of Christian existence” and a “prolongation of the great works of God in the Old Testament and in the New” (Daniélou, p. 17). In the sacraments, “Christians are introduced, even today, to the Kingdom of God” (p. 17). The sacraments are not mere symbols, indeed, they are salvific and connect our experience of God in this world today, to salvation history and into eternity.[2]
Because we understand the sacraments as connected to the whole of Christ’s work in salvation history, a history which began with the Triune God — Father, the Logos in the Son, and the movement of the Holy Spirit — in creation, we see pre-figurations or “types” in the Old Testament of the sacraments which were instituted by Christ in the New Testament. In some of the oldest Christian preaching, the Church fathers illuminate connections between Old and New typologically because these vivify the reality of the sacraments through human experiences of the world in which God created to us live and communicate with Himself.[3]
In turn, let’s examine, each sacrament that you received at the Easter Vigil. We will consider how these sacraments emerge typologically in the Old Testament to enrich our understanding. Then we will return to the light of the Paschal candle as a guide for the Christian life and the Church’s mission to evangelize the love of Jesus.
Baptism
In baptism, you probably leaned over a font to be sprinkled with water. Ancient baptism entailed immersion, and baptismal pools often depicted deer, recalling the psalmist’s prayer, “As my soul longs for the water, so my soul longs for you, O God” (Ps 42:1). You know this thirst for Baptism. In our desire for baptism, we seek the remission of sin and incorporation into the life of Christ in the Church.
The Old Testament, presents several typologies of baptism. In these “types” we understand water as both destructive and creative, and this informs our understanding of baptism today (Daniélou, p. 36). Recall that but for Noah’s family, humanity was destroyed by waters because of their disobedience (see Gn7-8). Additionally, the waters of the Red Sea consumed Pharaoh and his men.[4] Typologically, we also perceive life-giving aspects of water. Noah’s family was preserved in the Ark through water. Moreover, Israel, led by Moses (who we see as a “type” of Christ[5]), emerged from Egyptian slavery by crossing the Red Sea. We perceive life-giving water as Joshua delivered Israel across the Jordan into the Promised Land.
St. Cyril of Alexandria agreed that these events of the Old Testament share baptismal typologies. He also noted New Testament typologies, namely, that immersion in baptism is both “tomb and womb.”[6] Through immersion into water we die to sin and participate in Christ’s death. With water as womb, we are delivered from sin, receive the Holy Spirit, and emerge into new life of Christ, through Christ’s Resurrection, as children of God (Daniélou, p. 47).
Confirmation
In Confirmation you were marked with chrism and signed with the gift of the Spirit. The early Church saw this sacrament prefigured in priestly anointing in the Old Testament, especially in pouring oil over the priest’s head (see Lev 21:10). In Baptism you receive the Holy Spirt and in confirmation you receive the outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Spirit[7] ( Daniélou, p. 119). Baptism is the sacrament of beginning; Confirmation “is the Sacrament of those who are making progress in life with Christ in the Church” (p. 126). Having received gifts of Holy Spirit, Christians are called to bear witness to Christ before all the world and work to bring the Body of Christ to its fullness.
Eucharist
In the Old Testament, Melchisedech is a “type” of Christ who offered bread and wine. The consecrated food was a “type” of Eucharist (p. 143). Additionally in the Old Testament, God provided nourishment for His people as “daily bread” in the manna (see Ex 16, Num 11:1-9). However, as St. Ambrose notes, “[T]hose who ate this bread died in the desert” (Daniélou, p. 148-49). In the Eucharist, you have experienced the fullness of these “types” and partaken of the body, blood soul, and divinity, of Jesus Christ.
As sacrament, the Eucharist “communicates [] the substance of eternal life” and provides actual “nourishment of the people of God in their journey toward the land of divine promise” (p. 161). The Eucharist as a heavenly banquet expresses our unity with the divine.
What does this mean for the Christian life?
In baptism and confirmation, you were marked with the sign of the cross, and in the Eucharist, you physically consumed our Lord. In the sacraments, which we know to be “efficacious signs of God’s grace,” you are marked by experiencing Jesus’ complete outpouring of love for you! Those who experience the Lord are forever changed. Think of Jacob in the Old Testament. He wrestled with God, saw God face to face, and was never the same. Not only did the LORD change Jacob’s name to Israel, but for the rest of his life, Jacob was marked with a limp. (See Gn 32:22-32).
You, too, are marked. Through the sacraments, you are marked as completely loved by God and called to live differently. The natural response to this love is evangelization. Indeed, this is the deepest mission of the Church: “She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of his death and glorious Resurrection.”[8]
Having received sacramental initiation into the Church through Baptism, anointing and the gifts of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, participation in Christ’s sacrifice, death, and resurrection in the Eucharist, and nourishment for the Christian life, you have been marked as a Christian. In Baptism, this mark is physically visible in the sign of the cross. Typologically, the sign may be reminiscent of the Song of Songs “a seal upon your heart.”[9] In response to Christ’s love you offer your own gift of love consistent with the gifts your received from the Holy Spirit and ordered toward building up the Church.[10] Your active love of Christ takes seriously the command from Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded.”
Recall now the paschal candle at the Easter Vigil. Sometimes during the darkness, the priest will light a candle from the Paschal Candle, and the faithful, each holding their own candle, will sequentially light wicks from neighbor to neighbor. By the time each person in the church holds a lit their candle, there is no darkness to be found in any corner of the church.[11]
Light is an image of the Church, the ecclesial family to which you have been incorporated in Baptism. Light also reflects the image of God, who “is light,” and who dwells within the ecclesial community. Light reminds us of God’s words in Genesis, “Let there be light.” In the Christian life, to “be light” is to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. You received the gifts of the Holy Spirit in your Confirmation to undertake this evangelistic work!
A beautiful thing about light is that it is always additive. When one candle in the church is lit and then a second, the light of the first candle is not diminished by the presence of a second. Light diffuses, amplifies, and spreads. Now that you as new Catholics enjoy this light of Christ, you have a call from the Holy Spirit to share this light, to evangelize the Gospel everywhere (see Mt. 28:19). Continuous recollection of the sacrament of your baptism and confirmation, and frequent participation in Christ’s sacrifice and nourishment in the Eucharist will sustain you as a missionary disciple.
[1] The Roman Missal and the Easter Vigil | USCCB
[2] Daniélou wrote that “The sacraments were thought of as the essential events of Christian existence, and of existence itself, as being the prolongation of the great works of God in the Old Testaments and the New. In them was inaugurated a new creation which introduced the Christian even now into the Kingdom of God” (Danielou, p. 17.) This articulation is in accord with Ratzinger, who explained the sacraments as historical, mediated through Christ working in history, and as places in our earthly experience where we “glimpse the eternal” (Ratzinger, p. 158). Bouyer, too, would agree with Daniélou’s presentation of the sacraments because Bouyer recognized God’s vast and even minutely particular work in Cosmos. Bouyer saw God’s action in creation even in “earthly words.” He noted that “Even if the Bible is deemed wholly divine, they use everyday words, and it does seem that divine revelation, as reflected in these books thought to have come from heaven, borrow a great deal from earthly visions” (Bouyer, p. 6).
[3] “So it is that God created everything in his Wisdom, for his glory, and that the world can add nothing, through either its essence of its existence, to God’s conjoined existence and essence; the world can only express freely, in a temporal framework but for eternity, the necessary existence of god’s eternal essence” (Bouyer, p. 193).
[4] “As the water flowed back, it covered the chariots and the horsemen. Of all Pharaoh’s army which had followed the Israelites into the sea, not even one escaped.” Ex 12:28-29.
[5] See Daniélou, p. 93-96.
[6] Daniélou introduces St. Cyril of Alexandria’s treatment of water typologically, “But if the waters of Baptism are the tomb in which man the sinner is buried, they are also the vivifying element in which the new creature is generated. They are at once ‘tomb and mother’” (p. 47).
[7] Daniélou relies of St. Cyrian’s writing. Drawing from St. Paul’s language of “what is lacking,” he notes that what is “lacking after Baptism, that is ‘perfection,’ and this perfection consists in the gifts of the Holy Spirit.”
[8] Evangelium Nutiandi, 14.
[9] Daniélou wote of the sphragis as the imposition of the sign of the cross on the forehead in baptism. We see a similar marking Confirmation (p. 54). In Eucharist, the Christian is not just marked as belong to Christ, but consumes His very body! These marks must cause the Christian to live differently. Though Daniélou did not cite the Song of Song “seal” as typological, he did cite the “kiss of my mouth” as intimacy with Christ from the Canticle. It is not a stretch to view the “seal” as akin to the sphragis. That’s how I’d argue it!
[10] This is consistent with the idea that in Confirmation we receive gifts of the Holy Spirit, in part, as charisms, which are “graces of the Holy Spirit which directly or indirectly benefit the Church, ordered as they are to her building up, to the good of men, and the needs of the world” (CCC, 799).
[11] I did not find this particular practice outlined in the Roman Missal, but I have participated in this type of Easter Vigil multiple times. I did find it in several diocesan norms for the Easter Vigil.