Vigils Reading

A reading from

DOM ODO CASEL

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By his passion the Lord became pneuma [spirit]; accordingly, we too have

been filled with pneuma through the mystical passion in baptism and the

spiritual resurrection which flowed from it: we have become spiritual people.

Pneuma means the life of godhead, which the Lord gives us, now that he is

raised up to it, become it, his human nature lifted up now to God, and his place

at the Father’s right hand. Possession of the pneuma is, according to Peter, Paul,

and John, the mark of the Christian. It is expressed in a particularly positive

fashion within baptism through the rite of breathing, as the washing primarily

expresses purification from sin.

Through the pneuma the Christian is made like Christ, the pneuma in

person, and is thereby anointed with this pneuma, as Cyril of Jerusalem tells us

in his Mystagogical Catechesis:

“After you were baptized in Christ and had put on Christ, you were formed

too in the likeness of the Son of God. Because God predestined that we

should have acceptance as his children, he made us also of one form with

Christ’s body of glory. Because you are now sharers in Christ you are

rightly called christs, anointed ones, and of you God said, “touch not my

anointed ones”.

You were anointed as you received the image of the holy Pneuma, and

everything was done in image upon you, because you are images of the

anointed one. He bathed in the river Jordan, and gave the water the good

odor of his divinity, so that when he rose out of it, the pneuma came

3 The Mystery of Christian Worship, Odo Casel OSB, The Newman Press MD 1962, p.17-18.7

bodily upon him, like resting upon like. In just the same way the chrism

was given to you as you stepped out of the spring of waters, the off-set of

that chrism with which Christ was anointed.

But this is the holy pneuma of whom the blessed Isaiah spoke in the

person of the Lord, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he has anointed

me to bring the gospel to the poor; he has sent me on his business”. As

Christ was crucified in fact, buried and raised up again, so you gained

your high estate at baptism, crucified with him in likening, buried with

him so as to rise with him, so it is, too, for you with the chrism.

He was anointed with the oil of spiritual gladness, with the pneuma,

called the oil of joy because it is the spring of joy in spirit. And you were

anointed with myrrh, and in this way became co-sharers, companions of

Christ.”

The Christian is, therefore, a second christ, pneuma.

Through initiation, a person becomes a living member of Christ, a

‘christus’. Now no mere human person, but a person transformed, divinized,

new-begotten out of God to be God’s child. We carry the life of God within us. As

a member of the High-Priest, Christ, he or she is christus, an anointed one; a

priest who may sacrifice to God the Father, a sacrifice which through Christ

becomes uniquely acceptable and accepted.