Baptism & Confirmation
The Larger Context
For Christians, baptism is initiation into the Way of Jesus and into the Church. In the early centuries, baptism was a very serious matter since being a Christian could mean persecution and death. Preparation for baptism was carefully done and the ritual was a very powerful initiation ceremony into a transformed way of life. The ritual was about dying to a life of alienation, violence, and submission to the values of Empire, and being reborn into a life based on forgiveness, love, and community.
In the early church, Roman soldiers who wanted to convert had to resign and find other work. It is hard for us to know for sure if this more about allegiance to Caesar or the violence inherent in soldiering; they were so intertwined, that perhaps early Christians didn’t bother making a distinction. But clearly, in the eyes of the earliest Christians, being a soldier was not compatible with new life in Christ.
What a dramatic shift when Constantine and all of his soldiers were baptized! In the centuries following Christianity’s establishment as the official religion of the Roman Empire and the culture became Christianized, baptism began losing much of its original meaning and significance, and the meaning of Christian faith itself was changed. Baptism shifted from its earlier powerful confession of radical separation from the violence and domination of the culture, becoming instead, a requirement for eternal life of the soul and the guarantee of passage into heaven after the mortal death of the body. Most people were now Christians by virtue of their birth in a particular country; a person’s religious faith wasn’t founded upon choice, commitment, or spiritual practice. Since most people weren’t intentional or educated, emphasis on religious practice was shifted onto the professional clergy and on ordination rituals.
But, times have changed. In the West, we are in a post-modern, post-Christendom epoch that brings opportunities coupled with challenges. Over the last century, liturgical reforms (Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant) have aimed at recovering the centrality of Baptism as a transforming, empowering sacrament for all believers. Church teaching has tried to balance the importance of life in this World without dismissing the reality of life in the next. Education has become a necessity, so that laity – and not just clergy – can be empowered for ministries that help transform our culture and the whole of humanity. This reformation was incorporated into the Episcopal Church in the 1979 revision of the Book of Common Prayer, which refocused on the centrality of baptism and insisted that it should be publicly celebrated with the entire local congregation rather than as a private, family observance. More attention was given to the ritual so that it could become a more transforming rite of entry into the Way of Jesus.
St. Hildegard’s Community: Living into our Baptisms
As the Church returns to its roots in the early centuries, seeking re-creation in our own time and culture, St. Hildegard’s Community is a creative expression of this liturgical ferment and reform. In our Vision (1995), we proclaim:
We see a flowering of the Holy Spirit,
drawing deeply from the lively tradition
to do a new thing for a new time.
We recognize the Spirit,
calling us to boldness and passion.
We want to follow Jesus in compassion
and the liberating discipline of the Spirit.
Belonging to the larger Body of Christ,
we are called to help recreate the Church for the future,
to be new wine in new wineskins,
a Church in reverent relationship to all of creation.
A quotation from a letter that was handed out at our very first community liturgy on January 7, 1996, frames the importance of this view of baptism to our understanding of the practice of Christian faith:
It is fitting that we begin today as we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus by John in the River Jordan, one of the great Baptismal Feast Days of the Church. We hope that our worship together will make real in our lives the liveliness of being a baptized people, marked as Christ’s own forever…. In the gift and sacrament of baptism we are called into a community which embodies God’s hope-filled Dream for us and for the world. The Dream of God is large and varied, the possibilities almost endless. The Church will surely embody the Dream in multiple expressions. At St. Hildegard’s we hope to be a community which makes the Dream so real that each of us in our own way is strengthened to bring God’s possibilities to birth.
St. Hildegard’s: Baptism in our Liturgies
When we began our life together as a community, St. Hildegard’s wanted to reclaim non-violence as integral to the Way of Jesus. We also wanted to be explicit that baptism wasn’t intended to separate us from us others who were living the Dream of God in their own ways.
Most of our baptisms have occurred during the Easter Vigil after we tell the core stories of our faith and just before we celebrate the Resurrection. Since baptism is a way of life - the Way of Jesus – we renew our vows periodically – at the Easter Vigil, Pentecost, the Feast of All Saints, and the Baptism of Jesus. These opportunities throughout the year remind us to support one another in this life in Christ. There are also special times when an individual wants to mark a transformation in his or her own life and express it through the sacrament of Baptism. Occasionally, we gather together to celebrate a “Renewal of Vows,” with members sharing stories of their personal transformations.
In the early church there was a linear order: Entry into the Catecumenate to learn and prepare, the Rite of Baptism as initiation into the Body of Christ, and entry into the Eucharistic community to sustain Life in Christ. At St. Hildegard’s, these three important aspects of baptism are joined in dance together. The 3-year Viriditas curriculum takes baptism very seriously as a way to prepare for personal call and ministry as well as the ongoing formation of a community committed to living as Christ’s presence in the world.
Becoming Baptized
Most Hildegardians are baptized, but this is not a requirement to be able to participate fully in our life together. If you would like to explore the possibility of baptism for yourself or for a family member, please contact our community Priest, Judith Liro.
