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a Grateful Response
a Grateful Response liturgy & the life of the church
Breathing under water
The Missouri River has given definition to St. Benedict’s Abbey from its origin. In 1856 our founder Father Henry Lemke, O.S.B. disembarked at Westport, Mo. and soon began to minister in Doniphan, a city with prospects on the banks of the Missouri. Other monks soon followed, but when the river changed its course, Prior Augustine Wirth moved the nascent community to the riverfront city of Atchison. In 1929 the Abbey was relocated on the bluffs of the river that defines this corner of Kansas.
The waters of baptism define us as Christians. One of the earliest records of baptismal practice, the Didache, instructs that people are to be baptized in the cold running water of a stream. Early baptismal fonts were sunken into the pavement of churches so that the one being baptized could descend into the waters, as Jesus went down into the Jordan at his baptism. One could be immersed in the waters as Jesus was buried in the tomb, and, as Christ rose from the dead, one could arise from the waters to walk in newness of life (Romans 6). The newly baptized could come up out of the font on the other side, having passed through the waters of baptism, as did Israel through the waters of the Red Sea. The font is also considered the womb of the church from which her offspring are reborn (John 3). In his treatise on Baptism (c. 200), Tertullian says that we are little fishes after the example of the big fish Jesus, born in water and abiding in the waters of baptism. Many ancient baptismal fonts are lined with mosaic images of small fish with Jesus, the big fish. We are to learn to breathe under water, and so to live from our baptism.
In the fourth century, after Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire, the increased numbers of people seeking baptism and the development of the liturgical year all crystallized into the practice of baptizing at the Easter vigil. The baptistery adjacent to the Lateran Basilica, Rome’s Cathedral, remains from that era. Its font is a large sunken pool. It is round to suggest our being born again from the womb of the church. The round pool is flanked by eight columns of red porphyry, which support an octagonal lantern above the pool, suggesting that we are born again unto eternal life and that we come to illumination by the indwelling Spirit.
Once most of Europe had been Christianized, the practice of adult baptism at the Easter Vigil waned and infant baptism became the norm. The one to three year process of preparation of adults for baptism
at Easter, consequently, was truncated to the introductory rites for the baptism of infants. Thereafter, even adults were baptized according to the rites for infants. The process of preparing adults for baptism was renewed at the end of the 1800’s in China and Africa. Pope Pius XII renewed the Easter vigil in 1951, and the baptism of adults at the Father Daniel McCarthy Easter vigil was restored to the whole church in 1972 with the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. I wished to implement this renewed rite based on the ancient Roman practice when I followed the footsteps of Lemke and generations of our monks to pastor the tri-parishes of Doniphan County: St. Benedict’s, Bendena, St. Charles, Troy, St. Joseph’s, Wathena. With the help of Peggy Stanton and other parish ministers, we settled on the practice of celebrating the Easter vigil at Troy, using a temporary baptismal font that was inexpensive to make and permitted the submersion of adults. The font had a cruciform opening to express our dying and rising with Christ, and its overall shape was octagonal, expressive of our rising to eternal life. The first time we used the font, I borrowed the water heater from the Baptist Church The temporary baptismal font used by the Triparishes of Doniphan County. in Wathena, but, as they are more robust than I, we soon installed an inline water heater and a recirculation pump. Millie Theis helped to make white baptismal gowns, fulllength and pleated for modesty. Although the tri-parishes are small rural communities, each year we welcomed and baptized at least one, whether an adult or a child of catechetical age. We thereby learned to breath under water, as Tertullian said, and came to understand better the whole of Christian life in the light of our baptism. These parish experiences continue to inform my research in Rome. Discerning what it means to breathe under water is the focus of an upcoming book entitled Transition in the Vigil, edited and partially authored by Father James Leachman of Ealing Abbey, London, and me. The book will include a chapter by a local pastor and scholar, Father Paul Turner of St. Munchin of Limerick Parish, Cameron, Mo.. Our goal is to discern from a careful analysis of the shorter prayer texts and admonitions of the Easter vigil what difference the experience of being baptized, confirmed and brought to communion makes in the lives of those initiated into the mystery The font is the entryway into the larger sacramental life of the Church community, as of Christ at the vigil.
here in Corpus Christi Catholic Church, Lawrence, Kan. This mosaic of the baptism of Jesus shows him as if buried in the tomb.
Motto of the Order of St. Benedict. A blessing from God. A goal, a source of great beauty, order amid chaos, reconciliation after conflict.
Peace in a monastery. The Great Silence of nighttime at the Abbey. The rhythmic chant of the Psalms in the Liturgy of the Hours.
The whisper of a flame consuming a candle wick. Soiled hands from the tomato patch.
A walk in the silent cemetery, reading the names of the “Giants” who carried the tradition generations before. Seeking the wisdom of an elder. Youth, filled with promise, alone in a chapel.
