Church Matters: Retrieving the Great Tradition

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A Theology of the Christian Year, continued

God; and it also allows us to rejoice in the fact that Christian worship is no less than a creaturely sharing in the life and communion of the Triune God. Lent The calendrical influence of Easter extends also backwards through Lent. In the patristic church, the Paschal Vigil was the high moment for the administration of baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ. The climactic rites of Christian initiation described in the so-called Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus belong to the great service of Easter eve. After a preparatory catechumenate of several years, the learners finally emerged as “the elect,” and in the weeks immediately preceding Easter they underwent decisive instruction in the faith, summarized at last in the creed and in the Lord’s Prayer, and the candidates were solemnly exorcised in order to “make room” for the Holy Spirit who would henceforth fill their lives. Our season of Lent originated in the final weeks of preparation for baptism. It became also the season when penitents were made ready to have their baptismal privileges restored to them. Because we never out grow our baptism, and indeed all of us continue throughout this life to struggle in grace to master the remnants of sin, it eventually came to be regarded as a salutary practice for all believers to “remake” their own baptismal preparations each year during Lent. In our own time, the Roman Catholic church, in a widely imitated step, has introduced into its paschal liturgy a “renewal of baptismal vows.” Traditional Scripture readings for Lent relate the story of redemption and include Old Testament types of baptism as well as Gospel episodes which have baptismal resonances. The preacher has the opportunity to recall Christians to their baptismal foundations, somewhat in the way the apostle Paul grounded his exhortations and ethical instructions in the decisive act of grace which baptism signifies (e.g., Rom. 6; 1 Cor. 6:11; 12:12-13; Col. 2:11-3:17). There is, however, a secondary pivot in what may perhaps be thought of as the irregular ellipse of the church year, namely the incarnation of the Word. It is to Christmas as a focal celebration that we now look.