1 Sunday of Lent; Year B... DOCTRINE AND FAITH

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Genesis 9, 8-15; 1 Peter 3, 18-22; Mark 1,15-15:  1 Sunday of Lent;  Year B)

        

    Today is the first Sunday of Lent, a very important period of the liturgical year, which began last Wednesday and will end on Holy Thursday. It spans a period of 40 days. The Church dedicates this period for the preparation for Easter, the principal event of our salvation. This intense period of preparation for Easter was already in vogue in the 4th Century and was established for two purposes. The first was to prepare catechumens (aspirant Christians) for the reception of the sacrament of Baptism, which was solemnly administered during Easter Vigil, that is night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. The second reason was to dispose the souls of all the faithful (already baptized Christians) to celebrate in a dignified way, the paschal mysteries, by recalling their own baptism. During the Easter Vigil, we are actually called to renew our baptismal promises, our adhesion and fidelity to Christ; because through our Baptism we are inserted into him and we are made to participate in his mystery of death and resurrection. 

            There is, by and large, an allusion to baptism in the first and second readings of today. The first reading narrates the establishment of the covenant between God and Noah. This covenant comes after the deluge. The deluge is sometimes regarded as the Old Testament prefiguration of the purifying waters of Baptism. Taking the incident of deluge up St. Peter in his 2nd Letter, sees the waters of deluge as a symbol and figure of baptism. Just as the deluge brought about the  purification of the entire sinful humanity and the beginning of a new covenant between God and his people, baptism also brings about a new humanity redeemed by Christ, who died once and forever for our sins and who rose from the dead. With this new humanity, purified in his blood, he ratified a covenant between God and people, a covenant that is both new, definitive and forever. Our meditation on the import once of baptism on this first Sunday of Lent should serve to put us in the true spirit of Lent. This will enable us appreciate and live out the baptismal dimension of the season of Lent. 

            All the sacraments have the efficacy of sanctifying the soul, each in its own proper way. Each of them does so through the merits of the life, ministry and especially the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Baptism has the capacity of communicating sanctifying grace to the soul, the greatest and most sublime gift that God can bestow on his creature. Sanctifying grace is the divine life, which the soul participates in; it is the divine engrafting into the depth of the soul, which elevates it to the supernatural level; a regeneration, new rebirth, a rebirth and into the supernatural life. Baptism elevating us to the divine, supernatural level, truly makes of us children of God (1 John 3,2); we are children of God by adoption, through participating in his divine life. In baptism, we are immersed in the paschal mystery of Christ who died and rose from death. This immersion should eradicate sin and roots of sin in our lives so that we can rise and live a new of life (Rom 6,4-11). Through baptism, we become united with Christ, engrafted in Him, just as branches of a mango tree are united to the trunk of the tree; it is from Christ that we receive new divine impulse. Uniting all of us to Christ, Baptism makes all of us members of his Mystical Body: He is the head and we are the members; he constitutes us as a Church, the People of God or the Family of God, a community of brothers and sisters that share the same life of grace, the same mission in the world and the final destiny of eternal life in the world to come.

            We need to note some practical implication from the reality of the Sacrament of Baptism: (i). If baptism communicates to us the divine grace and life, we should make every possible effort not to lose it through mortal sin. If we find ourselves in the unfortunate situation of losing it, we should, as soon as possible, regain it through the reception of the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Sacramental Confession). (ii) If baptism really makes us children of God, the practical implication should be clearly reflected in our lives. This can be done by having a good filial love and a good Father-Son/Daughter relationship with God. This filial relationship will easily and naturally lead to the keeping of God’s commandments and showing universal love to all, especially to those who are in any form of physical, moral and spiritual needs. (iii) If Baptism engrafts us to Christ and makes us members of his Mystical Body, the Church, the People of God or the Family of God, we must then follow him faithfully, for he is the perfect image of God the Father, and our way to the Father. It is also from him that we can always source divine life, especially from his words in the Scriptures and his Sacraments, the vital lymph of grace. A further implication of this doctrine of baptism of making us one with Christ and eventually constituting all of us one Family of God was expatiated by Paul in his letter to the Galatians: ...for all or you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ, There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3,27-28). This Paul’s teaching on baptism makes of the existing walls of division separating people along cultural, class, social, economic, political and religious lines senseless. Unfortunately, all of these are existing among us. What is more, some of us, the so called avowed Christians, even in this modern period hold, maintain, and make certain cultural practices and customs like the Osu Caste system, sectional mentality, diala and ohu institutions to flourish. Despite having been washed in the waters of baptism, Christians continue to define, treat and discriminate against some fellow Christians along these socio-cultural divides. Parents refuse to give consent to marriages between their children and people whom they designate as osu or ohu. Women are still regarded as second class human beings who have little or no rights and must be subservient to their male counterparts. Let us reflect seriously on how to eradicate these anomalies first from our minds and then from our society (iv) As we are engrafted into Christ, we share the threefold mission of Christ: his mission as a priest, prophet and king. To exercise his prophetic mission, the baptized is to be God’s spokesman and has the onus to speak against various forms of injustices in the home, parish community and in the society at large. He should be the voice of the voiceless and the strength of the weak. There is ample opportunity for all Christians to also exercise the kingship mission which we acquired at our baptism. We can do this by getting involved honestly in politics, to be voted in or to vote in honest persons. It is both our duty and privilege. We need not shy away from this our baptismal duty. This is because your vote can make a big difference in the right direction. You have, as we are preparing to elect our leaders, ample opportunity of acquiring the permanent voters card that will enable you discharge your kingship-mission you acquired at baptism. 

            The exhortation to conversion which the Church in the name of  Jesus makes during this Lenten period, means that we should be coherent with the implications of our baptism, becoming more and more perfect, what we are in reality by virtue of our baptism and developing those potentials of graces that we were gifted with at our baptism. Our period of Lent should be a sort of forty days spiritual exercise, a period of training of the soul and mind, through intense prayer, assiduous listening of the word of God, practice of mortification and self discipline, as well as charitable work. We undertake all these in order to celebrate the feast of Easter in a renewed and new Spirit, and that our whole lives may become an ongoing conversion to God. May God so help us to realize our intentions (and resolutions) this Lent. I wish you all God’s choicest blessing during this Lent! HappySunday! 
 +John Okoye.