Vigils Reading

A reading from “On the Sacraments” by

ST AMBROSE

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You were asked: ‘Do you believe in God the Father almighty?’ You replied:

‘I believe’, and you were immersed: that is, buried. You were asked for a second

time: ‘Do you believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and in his Cross?’ You replied: ‘I

believe’, and you were immersed: which means that you were buried with

Christ. For one who is buried with Christ rises again with Christ. You were asked

a third time: ‘Do you believe also in the Holy Spirit?’ You replied: ‘I believe’, and

you were immersed a third time, so that the threefold confession might absolve

the manifold lapses of the past.

We can give you an illustration of this. The holy Apostle Peter appeared to

lapse through human weakness during the Lord’s Passion. To wipe out and

absolve the fault of his denial, he was asked by Christ three times if he loved

him. Peter replied: Lord, you know that I love you. He answered three times so

as to be absolved three times.

Thus the Father forgives sin, so does the Son, and so does the Holy Spirit.

Do not be surprised that we are baptized in one name: in the name, that is, of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; because Christ spoke of only one

name where there is one substance, one divinity, one majesty. This is the name

of which it is written: In this must all find salvation. It is in this name that you

have all been saved, that you have been restored to the grace of life.

So the Apostle exclaims, as you have just heard in the reading, Whoever is

baptized, is baptized in the death of Jesus. What does in the death mean? It

means that just as Christ died, so you will taste death; that just as Christ died to

sin and lives to God, so through the Sacrament of Baptism you are dead to the

old enticements of sin and have risen again through the grace of Christ. This is a

death, then, not in the reality of bodily death, but in likeness. When you are

immersed, you receive the likeness of death and burial, you receive the

Sacrament of his Cross; because Christ hung upon the Cross and his body was

fastened to it by the nails. So you are crucified with him.

The font has the shape and appearance of a sort of tomb. When we believe

in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we are received and immersed in it;

that is, we are restored to life. You also receive the myrrh, that is, the chrism,

over your heads. Why over your heads? Because the faculties of the wise man

are situated in his head, says Solomon. Wisdom without grace is inert; but

when wisdom receives grace, then its work begins to move toward fulfillment.

This is called regeneration.

What is regeneration? You can read in the Acts of the Apostles that a verse

from the second Psalm, You are my son, today I have begotten you, seems to

refer to the Resurrection. That is why he is also called The firstborn from the

dead. For what is resurrection except that we rise from death to life? So it is in

Baptism, which is an image of death: when you are immersed and rise up again,

there, certainly, is an image of the Resurrection. So as Christ’s Resurrection is

interpreted by the Apostle as a regeneration, so also this resurrection from the

font is a regeneration.