Clothe yourselves with Love

And above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. In Nomine +

What better epistle readings could we have had today for Kyrie’s baptism? The apostle Paul is very much giving us an instruction for how we should live our lives as a Christian, and when better to hear it than at a baptism?

Baptism is, in part, about casting off the old man - including his clothing - and to clothe ourselves in the new man, AND in love! While it might be too much to ask for at the current time to find perfect harmony, but we can - and should - at least ask that Kyrie will find in her heart that very peace of Christ that Paul talks about!

So, then, what is baptism?

Our baptisms should not be seen by us as simply starting points from some time in the past (perhaps even not remembered by us consciously). Our baptisms also are not the end—our decision for Christ is not finished in baptism. Newly baptised infants will grow up, and they will be faced with the same decisions all Christians face, to live for Christ each day (take up your cross daily, the Lord commands), or to live for something else (ourselves, world, pleasure). Instead of viewing our baptisms as static moments in the past, our baptism should have a living significance for each us at this present moment (and at every moment in our Christian lives).

We said that baptism isn’t simply an initiation, and it’s also not the end of all things—but St. Gregory of Nyssa writes that the baptismal font is both a womb and a tomb (beginning and an end). In baptism, we die to the old man—to the man of the world, of the flesh, to the man of sin. And in baptism, we’re re-born a new man—in Christ, filled with the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit. We’re a new creature, living in and with the peace of God. There is a baptismal dimension to our whole life—baptism is the beginning and the foundation of ALL Christian life. This baptismal dimension that runs throughout our lives is unfolded for us by two old Church Fathers (Sts. Kallistos and Ignatios) in a set of writings called the Philokalia—they write “the aim of the Christian life is to return to the most perfect grace of the most Holy and life-giving Spirit originally conferred on us in baptism.”

When we’re baptised into Christ and we put on Christ and we die to the old man, for those moments, we’re perfect. We’ve been reborn in the image of Christ, and until we sully that image with sin, we are in baptism what mankind was created from the beginning to be—the image and likeness of God. So the baptismal dimension of our lives is the reality that the moment of our baptism is a state, a perfection, that we’ll seek again for the remainder of our lives. St. Silouan writes that the real struggle of the Christian life is how to retain the grace of God, and not squander it and chase it away by our sin.

Baptismal grace certainly on one hand is complete – we’re reborn in Christ and we receive the grace and the presence of the Holy in our lives. We can’t add to this mystery of grace. But we do progressively discover it and make it more manifest in our daily lives. We learn to live our baptism the more we practice living the Christian life in the world. The baptised is sealed as a newly enlisted warrior of Christ—it’s a real battle to separate ourselves from the ways of the world and to follow Christ (it’s not easy-St. Paul even writes that he fails to do the things he’s supposed to do, and he does things he’s not supposed to do). But all the gifts of grace are contained potentially in baptism. Everything is there—in baptism we receive the potential of all of the gifts of grace that we see in the Scriptures and the lives of the Saints. We then just have to decide what to do with this grace; a decision we all have to make every day. To make use of the grace of God for the Kingdom of Heaven, or to have his focus somewhere else.

The Christian life can be described as a journey from baptismal grace to baptismal grace. If we are actively engaged in living a Christian life, then we gradually become more and more conscious of the grace of God within us. We can sum up the Christian journey with the phrase—become what you are. The baptised are already the bearers of Christ, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Our journey is to live that reality.

We give thanks to God that we have been able to welcome Kyrie into the St Thomas family this morning, and as we step into the world after the conclusion of the Mass, remember that the grace of God from Holy Baptism is an ever- present reality in our lives – our duty is to live up to the great gifts that God has given us, and St Paul gives us a pretty good hunch on how to do that!

And above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. In Nomine +