Apparently, I needed the break. For the past few weeks, I've just been... so... tired. I guess it's probably a combination of poor air quality due to all the fires that have been active in this region, summer allergies, and maybe the heat, too, although that usually doesn't bother me at all. But I've been mentally and somewhat spiritually tired as well, and like I said, apparently, I needed the break. I needed to step back, to breathe, to read, to sleep, to write (away from the computer).
Side note: while I was gone, the blog hit, and then exceeded, 2000 views! Woot!
Okay, end of jubilatory moment. :D Back to the point. Which was what, again, you ask?
Well...
I'm currently reading the book Jesus of Nazareth (by Pope Benedict XVI - a.k.a. "B16" for short) with a few friends - and we are attempting to discuss it every week. We just started this effort, and are in various stages of reading/trying to read the first couple of chapters. In the first chapter, B16 discusses the Baptism of Christ by St. John the Baptist in the Jordan River. He brings up some interesting points about the nature of Baptism, and one of them in particular really stuck with me: the idea that Baptism is about death and life - about death and resurrection.
When (as Catholics or Christians of any denomination) think about Baptism, I think we can intuitively make the connection between Baptism and death/life or death/resurrection - because Baptism is all about leaving your old life, your old way of being, behind, and accepting new life in Christ - resurrection, as it were. It is a dying to the "old self," and being reborn.
What we don't always consider is that water is just as much a symbol of death as it is of life. As B16 says in Jesus of Nazareth, "The ancient mind perceived the ocean as a permanent threat to the cosmos, to the earth; it was the primeval flood that might submerge all life." Water was seen as a destructive force, and of course, we know water can indeed be destructive (we've probably all seen reports from FL in recent days about flooding from the tropical storm they've been battling with) - just like fire (and I'm sure we've all seen reports, particularly from CO, over the past few days, about the destruction wreaked by wildfires there). But on the average, particularly for those of us who live in the desert, we tend to see water more as a symbol of life and less as a symbol of death.
So how intriguing (and perceptive of the Church in her liturgies) is it that, in the Prayers of the Faithful read at funeral Masses, the first prayer is, "In Baptism, (name of deceased) received the light of Christ. Scatter the darkness now, and lead him/her over the waters of death." Acknowledgment of water as a symbol of death. But --- remember that, in order to die in the water, you must be submerged in it - you have to drown there.
"Lead them over the waters of death."
Over them. Not through them. Over them. The prayer acknowledges water as a symbol of death - but also acknowledges that this baptized person may pass over that symbol of death - to eternity.
When the baptized experience physical death, we trust God to lead us over the waters of eternal spiritual death - because that has already been conquered, through death and rebirth in the waters of Baptism. We go through the water at Baptism, to cross over the water at death. (With quite a bit of falling and getting up and all of those things in between!)
It vaguely reminds me of the words to a hymn I love to hear at Mass - "Shepherd me, oh God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death, into life..."
+Peace and good.
Please pray for all those who have been affected by the wildfires that have been so destructive in recent days - as well as for those affected by flooding. I have family living in CO Springs who were evacuated from their home earlier this week because of the Waldo Canyon Fire; thanks be to God, their home was not destroyed, but many others were.
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