I love Baptism! I love everything about the rite, especially the "I claim you for Christ" and the "keep this garment unspotted until the wedding feast." That is why I was especially taken aback at a breakfast conversation here at the Scripture Seminar (where I am running the book table). One of the lay women who had traveled quite a distance to come to this event, and who has obviously really worked at growing in theological awareness (I hesitate, almost, to say "knowledge") remarked that the part of the ritual where the celebrant says "I claim you for Christ" makes her shiver with indignation at the imperial presumption in those words. But then, she doesn't believe in infant baptism and is sure that Augustine is to blame not only for the notion of original sin, but for the practice of infant baptism itself.
Anyway, her rejection of the expression (as well as of infant baptism!) got me to reflect on my instinctive drawing back from the very idea that someone would have such an interpretation of those beautiful words as to see them as "imperial" in the most negative sense possible.
"I claim you for Christ." Is the celebrant "claiming" something that is not Christ's own already? Do these words violate the rights or the freedom of the one so claimed? Do not all things belong to Christ already? I mean, not only in virtue of all things being created through the Word, but also by the fact of the Incarnation, when Christ "in a certain way, united himself with all men"? And much more through his whole earthly life, culminating in his death "for us and our salvation."
If "all things in heaven and on earth bend the knee at the name of Jesus" ("all things," not just "all people" or "all Christians"), then where is the violence or injustice in claiming for Christ an infant whose parents seek that grace for their child? What would any sane person, confronted with the infinite good, desire and "claim" as their own?
"All things in heaven and on earth", "all time and all the ages" and we ourselves "are Christ's and Christ is God's."
Maybe Jesus is suggesting to me to pray the canticles in Ephesians and Colossians with a deeper heart, "claiming" all things for him!
What is your take on this woman's perspective?
7 comments:
I have to laugh as about eight years ago I sat in a catechism class given by a wonderful, faithful priest and I ask if everyone really believed this "Jesus thing" you know literally...
Embarrassing but true, it is amazing how misguided we can be.
I think Jesus is telling you to think about St. Ignatius' two banners. I've done enough research on exorcism to know that there's another side trying to "claim" people. Because of that, like you, I love to hear those words!
As I reflected more, I began to wonder if maybe there is a persona "need" involved in this woman's disparaging of infant baptism (that was her main point). Maybe she has a child who left Christ for some other "savior" (or none at all). Because sometimes our emotional needs play these tricks on us.
It could only be "injustice" to "claim someone for Christ" if Christ were not, as the document Vita Consacrata puts it, "the eschatological goal toward which all things tend," the one and supreme good in itself.
Maybe she's decided that if anyone is claimed for Christ, they are "owned" in some way. If she doesn't believe that Christ owns her, body and soul, then she surely won't want to be so presumptuous as to offer a child to this ravening tyrant of a god, to be owned by him/her/it.
Some people choke on the idea of being an American. A Christian? Heaven forfend? They are their OWN persons.
Sort of off topic... but I can tell you one more being that belongs to Christ, at least more than he used to. I've been accepted to St. John's Seminary!! I don't think I had shared the news. Thanks for the prayers!!
Wonderful! May St. Paul accompany you in a special way throughout your formation! Always relate everything you are learning to the needs of the people God will send you to serve. That will keep it all in context.
Hurrah!
Infant baptism is always a big stumbling block to the personal relationship with Christ crowd. I just had a very cordial email discussion on these topics on a Christian handcraft group I belong to. For them, you make that one time choice to accept Christ as your personal savior, and you are saved. It is permanent and irrevocable, and it must be a personal choice.
For me, I treaure so much of the meaning of our Catholic baptism. The claiming for Christ, the promises which state very clearly whose side we are on in the eternal battle. The family drawing itself and the church as a circle of protection for the child against the power of evil. This is a very powerful occasion.
We live in times that do not acknowledge even the existence of the devil, so much of that might be lost on people.
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