Sermon on Baptism

After Adam sinned, as I have related, the Lord then saying, Thou art earth, and unto earth thou shalt go; he was condemned to death. This condemnation flowed down upon the whole race. For all have sinned, nature itself now pressing upon them, as the Apostle says: Because through one man sin entered, and through the offense death, and thus it came unto all men, in whom all have sinned. Sin therefore reigned, by whose bonds we were dragged as captives to death; to death, that is, everlasting. But this sin, before the times of the Law, was not even understood, as the Apostle says: For until the Law was set, sin was not held in the world, that is, it was not seen; at the coming of the Law it revived. For it was made manifest, so that it might be seen: yet in vain, because scarcely anyone observed it.

For the Law said: Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not covet; yet concupiscence remained with all its vices: thus this sin, before the Law, slew man with a hidden sword; the Law having laid it bare. What hope then for man? Without the Law he perished, because he could not see sin; and under the Law, because he fell into the very thing he saw. Who could free him from destruction? Hear the Apostle: Most wretched man that I am! Who shall free me from the body of this death? Grace, he says, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

What is grace? The remission of sin, that is, a gift. For grace is a gift. Therefore Christ, coming and taking up man, first presented that very man, pure and innocent, from the power of sin, unto God. Isaiah says: Behold, a virgin, he says, shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, before he knows to refuse the evil, or choose the good. And again of him: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. Under this patronage of innocence, as soon as Christ undertook the defense of his name in that very flesh of sin, immediately that parent of the disobedience of sin, who had once deceived the first men, began to hasten, to seethe, to tremble. For he had to be conquered by the loosing of the law of sin, by which alone he had held man, or could hold him.

He arms himself therefore for spiritual battle against the immaculate one; and first, by that same craft by which he had conquered Adam in paradise, he approaches under the guise of dignity; and as though concerned for heavenly power: If thou art the Son of God, he says, say that these stones become loaves: so that while Christ, blushing, or unwilling to conceal that he is the Son of God, might fulfill the commands of the tempter. Behold, he is not yet silent, suggesting that if he cast himself down from on high, he would be received in the hands of Angels, whom the Father would have commanded to bear him upon their shoulders, lest perchance he strike his foot against a stone, while the Lord wishes to prove that he is the one concerning whom the Father would have commanded that which the tempter urges.

The serpent, at last cast down, as though now yielding, promises the kingdoms of the world, those very things he had once seized from the first man; so that, while believing he had conquered the Advocate of mankind, having received back the empire he was defending, he might incline him toward the dignity offered by the impious one, and thus at some point he might sin. But in all these things the enemy is overcome, and is dissolved by heavenly power, as the Prophet says to the Lord, that thou mayest loose the enemy and the avenger, since I shall behold the heavens, the work of thy fingers.

The devil ought to have yielded; yet he does not yet cease. He suborns the Scribes and Pharisees and all that host of the impious, with known snares, and stirs them with furies. Therefore they, after various arts and deceitful hearts, by which they thought to deceive the Lord with serpent-like compliance; when they profited nothing, at last assailed him with open banditry and the most cruel kind of suffering: so that either by the indignity of the circumstances, or by the pain of the torments, he might do or say something unjust, and thus lose the man he bore, and his soul be left among the dead; for whom there was one law, to hold the sinner: For the sting of death is sin. Christ therefore persisted, and did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth, as we have said; not even when he was led to the sacrifice. This was to conquer, to be condemned without sin.

For the devil had received power over sinners, which he claimed for himself over the immaculate one; and thus he himself was overcome, decreeing over the Just One that which by the law he had received he was not permitted to do. Whence the prophet says to the Lord: That thou mayest be justified in thy words, and mayest overcome when thou art judged. And thus, as the Apostle says, having led away the powers, Christ condemned sin in the flesh, nailing it to the cross, and cancelling the handwriting of death. Hence it is that God did not leave his soul among the dead, nor did he give his Holy One to see corruption. Hence it is that, the stings of death being trodden underfoot, on the third day he sprang back in the flesh, reconciling it to God and restoring it to eternity, sin being conquered and erased.

But if he alone conquered, what did he confer upon the rest? Hear briefly. The sin of Adam had passed into the whole race: For through one man, as the Apostle says, the offense entered; and through the offense, death; thus it came unto all men. Therefore it is necessary that the righteousness of Christ likewise pass into the race: and just as he, through sin, destroyed his own stock; so Christ, through righteousness, gives life to his whole race. This the Apostle urges, saying: That as through the disobedience of one, many were made sinners; so through the obedience of one, many might be made righteous: and as sin reigned unto death, so also grace might reign through righteousness unto life everlasting.

Someone will say to me: But the sin of Adam passed rightly into his posterity, because they were begotten of him: and are we then begotten of Christ, that for his sake we might be able to be saved? Do not think in carnal terms: you shall see presently how we are begotten with Christ as parent. In the last times Christ took upon himself a soul together with flesh from Mary: this soul he came to save, this soul he did not leave among the dead, this soul he joined to his own spirit and made his own. And this is the marriage of the Lord, joined to one flesh, that according to that great mystery the two might become one flesh, Christ and the Church. From this marriage the Christian people is born, the Spirit of the Lord coming from above; and upon the substance of our souls, the heavenly seed being poured and mingled in, we grow within the womb of the mother, and being poured forth from her womb, we are quickened to life in Christ.

Whence the Apostle: The first Adam, unto a living soul: the last Adam, unto a quickening spirit. Thus Christ begets in the Church through his priests, as the same Apostle says: But I have begotten you in Christ. And so the seed of Christ, that is, the Spirit of God, pours forth through the hands of the priest the new man, stirred within the womb of the mother, and received at the birth of the font, with faith, however, acting as the bridal attendant. For neither shall he who has not believed appear to be engrafted into the Church, nor shall he who has not received the Spirit be reckoned begotten of Christ. It must therefore be believed that we can be born. For thus Philip says: If thou believest, thou canst. Christ must be received, that he may beget, because thus the apostle John says: As many as received him, he gave them power to become sons of God.

But these things cannot otherwise be fulfilled except by the sacrament of the laver, and of the chrism, and of the bishop. For by the laver sins are cleansed; by the chrism the Holy Spirit is poured over; but both of these we obtain by the hand and mouth of the bishop: and thus the whole man is reborn and renewed in Christ; that as Christ rose from the dead, so we also might walk in newness of life; that is, that laying aside the errors of the old life, the servitude of idols, cruelty, fornication, luxury, and the other vices of flesh and blood, we might follow new ways through the Spirit in Christ: faith, chastity, innocence, purity. And: as we have borne the image of the earthly man, let us also bear that of him who is from heaven; because the first man is from the earth, earthly; the second is from heaven, heavenly. Doing this, most beloved, we shall no longer die.

Even if we are dissolved in this body, we shall live in Christ, as he himself says: He who believes in me, though he die, shall live. Finally, we are certain, on the very testimony of the Lord, that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the saints of God are alive. Finally, of these very ones the Lord says: But all these live: for God is the God of the living, not of the dead. And the Apostle says of himself: To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain: I would wish to be dissolved and to be with Christ. And further: But while we are in this body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight.

This is what we believe, most beloved brethren. Otherwise: If in this world only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable. The life of the world, as you yourselves see, is common with cattle and wild beasts and birds, or even longer than ours. And that which is proper to man, which Christ gave through his own Spirit, that is, everlasting life; but only if we sin no more. For as death is acquired by wickedness, and avoided by virtue; so life is lost by wickedness, and kept by virtue. The wages therefore of sin is death: the gift of God, eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Above all, keep this in mind, little ones: that all nations at one time (as we have said above) were handed over to the princes and powers of darkness; but now, through the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord, have been set free.

He is the one, he it is who has redeemed us, forgiving us all our sins, as the Apostle says, and blotting out the handwriting of disobedience that was against us; for he took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; stripping off the flesh, he led away the powers, openly triumphing over them in himself. He has loosed the fettered, and burst our bonds, as David had said: The Lord raises up the fallen, the Lord looses the fettered, the Lord gives light to the blind. And again: Thou hast broken my bonds: to thee will I offer the sacrifice of praise. Loosed then from our bonds, when through the sacrament of baptism we come together to the sign of the Lord, we renounce the devil and all his angels, whom we formerly served; that we may no longer serve them, being freed by the blood and name of Christ.

But if anyone hereafter, forgetful of himself and ignorant of his redemption, again passes over to the servitude of the Angels and to those weak and beggarly elements of the world, he shall be bound again with those ancient fetters and chains, that is, with the bonds of sin; and his last state shall be made worse than the first: because the devil will bind him more vehemently as a runaway now recaptured; and Christ will no longer be able to suffer for him, because he who has risen from the dead shall die no more. Therefore, most beloved, once we are washed, once we are freed, once we are received into the immortal kingdom: blessed once are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Hold fast firmly to what you have received, keep it happily, sin no more hereafter. Keep yourselves pure and unspotted from this time unto the day of the Lord.

Great and boundless are the rewards laid up for the faithful; which eye has not seen, he says, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man. That you may be able to receive these things, obtain them by the labors of righteousness and by spiritual vows. Amen.