Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

HOLMES Baptism: Patristic Resources 257

honour than your entrance into the Church. Let us have great zeal for

virtue'(1.46).

Alongside such instruction, the catechumens also underwent exorcisms.

Their minds and souls are to be cleansed (2.12), and they are to be made

aware of their present captivity to the devil, so that they may be more

sensible of the great deliverance and salvation which baptism represents

(2.14). In the rite of baptism itself they will be required by the priest first

to declare 'I renounce thee, Satan, thy pomps, thy service, and thy wdrks'

(2.20), and next 'I enter into thy service, O Christ' (2.21). The sense of

one life and one service ending and of another beginning, close to the

heart of the understanding of baptism here, is made very clear by these

declarations, which were made at 3 p.m. on Good Friday, the hour that

Christ died (11.19). The catechumens are then immediately anointed with

the sign of the cross to protect them from the devil between their renun-

ciation of him and their baptism. The oil, says John, 'is a mixture of olive

oil and unguent; the unguent is for the bride, the oil is for the athlete'

(11.27).

During the Easter vigil, on the Saturday night, the candidates were

anointed a second time. They were stripped of their old clothes and cov-

ered all over with olive oil, representing the Holy Spirit under whose

protection the candidates now were, and who was about to come upon

them. Their old covering of sin and shame now gone, they are to enter the

waters, naked and unashamed ('Do not, then, feel shame here, for the bath

is much better than the garden of Paradise. ..',11.29). Chrysostom's own

description of the moment of baptism is sufficiently powerful to warrant

quotation:

[T]he priest makes you go down into the sacred waters, burying the old man

and at the same time raising up the new, who is renewed in the image of his

Creator. It is at this moment that...the Holy Spirit descends upon you.

Instead of the man who descended into the water, a different man comes

forth, one who has wiped away all the filth of his sins, who has put off the

old garment of sin and has put on the royal robe... As soon as they come

forth from those sacred waters, all who are present embrace them, greet

them, kiss them, rejoice with them, and congratulate them, because those

who were heretofore slaves and captives have suddenly become free men

and sons and have been invited to the royal table... Since they have put on

Christ Himself, wherever they go they are like angels on earth, rivaling the

brilliance of the rays of the sun (2.25-27).

This, for John, is what baptism should be, but it was not always thus.

Baptism provided full entry into the Church, and with it full exposure to