Notre Dame de Reims Cathedral has a rich history of martyrs, bishops, and royals. As part of the Roman Empire, there is evidence of a Christian presence in Riems in the middle of the third century. The first church on the present site of the cathedral was built around 400 by St. Nicasius (Nicaise), a bishop who died by the hands of invaders (likely Huns, according to one source) when they plundered the city.[1] The statue of him on the north entrance of the church depicts him holding his head with its bishop mitre, indicating a tradition of beheading for his death (photo, right).
But more famous than Bishop Nicaise (French spelling) is Bishop Rémi or Remigius (c. 443 – 533), who is partially visible on the far right in today’s banner photo. In the center is Clovis (c. 466 – 511), King of the Franks, standing in the baptismal font. To the left of Clovis, holding his crown, is St. Coltilde (474 – 545), a Burgundian princess married to Clovis; she was a devout Catholic at a time when Arians were the majority. Clovis was not Christian, but when he appealed to his wife’s God in battle and won, he consented to be baptized (between 496 and 508), and “became the only Catholic sovereign in Christendom.”[2] Gregory of Tours wrote of the event (quoted in Butler’s Lives of the Saints):
Among clouds of incense … “like a new Constantine he moved forward to the water, to blot out the former leprosy, to wash away in this new stream the foul stains from old days.”
But it is Queen Clotilde (not Clovis) whose life can inspire us 1500 years later. Like many couples today, she was the devout partner whose faith was an instrument of the Spirit, drawing her beloved toward Christ and his redemptive work. In our research on the adult catechumenate, Kent and I have encountered similar stories (without the baggage of royalty), such as that of Gail and George. George was the devout one, and Gail, with little connection to and knowledge of Christianity, recognized early in their relationship that attending church was important to George, and so she started coming with him. When I interviewed them, they had been married about two years and were attending the adult catechumenal sessions together; Gail related that she had many questions and doubts. But when she had consented to the baptism of her own child and understood that meant raising the child as a Christian, she realized that she, too, had to be claimed by Christ in this initiation ritual, and so she, like Clovis, moved into “this new stream” of cleansing water.
[1]Butler’s Lives of the Saints, St. Nicasius, 14 December.
[2]Butler’s Lives of the Saints, St. Clodilda, 3 June.
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Photos of Riems cathedral by Rhoda Schuler, June 2024
Kent has passed the blogger’s baton to me (Rhoda) for the month of July. Having just returned from travels in Europe (where Christianity is waning) and Ethiopia (where Christianity is flourishing), I’ll be sharing some of my pilgrimage experiences, reflecting on baptism, Christian formation, and the presence of Christ in and through the church now and in the past.
The photo (left) is of the UNESCO site, the Abbey of Mont Saint Michel, an island gem off the coast in Normandy, France. The legend surrounding this magnificent site is recorded in a ninth-century document, Revelatio Ecclesiae Sancti Michaelis, which relates events purportedly from 708, when the archangel St. Michael (for biblical references, see Daniel, chapters 10 and 12; Jude 9; Revelation 12:2-12) appeared to Bishop Aubert of Avranches in a dream and instructed him to build a church honoring St. Michael. The chapel eventually built by the bishop (who was as slow as Peter in Acts 10 to catch on to a vision from heaven) was a replica of a cave shrine in Italy built on a spot where St. Michael was said to have appeared in 492. Thus, this remote and holy place was dedicated to St. Michael and quickly became a major pilgrimage site. In 966, a Benedictine presence replaced the group of priests (“canons”) who had managed the pilgrimage site for several centuries. Today the tourists and pilgrims tour the monastic complex built by the Benedictines from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries on this island rock. But I digress …
With the medieval pilgrims came economic opportunity. As the booklet published by Centre des Monuments Nationaux (purchased in the Abbey gift shop) says, the “flow of pilgrims thronging to the abbey prompted merchants to settle on the rock…. The mercantile atmosphere in the village should not put off the modern visitor: it has always been a part of place” (17). To serve the spiritual needs of the merchants and their families, a parish church was formed; the present building dates from the fifteenth century and is still functioning today. In this modest and ancient church is the baptismal font that heads this blog post. The estimated percentage of the French population that professes to be Christian today is about 50%, making it remarkable that the parish church in this tiny village is still a living and active Christian community. When we visited, there was no sign of when the font had been last used, but there were flyers announcing parish activities, fresh flowers adorning the main and side altars, and prayer requests written in a book. The monastic presence ended with the French Revolution, and from 1793 to 1863 the abbey complex was used as a prison. But the presence of devout Christians who gather regularly for worship has continued (perhaps uninterrupted) through seismic historic events—the Revolution and resulting separation of church and state, the World Wars of the twentieth century, the process of “secularization” and rising number of those with no religious affiliation of the last half century. The architectural masterpiece of the abbey complex is indeed breath-taking and glorious, but the constancy of the living, active Body of Christ in this modest, medieval church is more profound and inspiring.
A month ago, this email from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship landed in my email box, asking that I “help us spread the word about this opportunity.” It may be too late for our readers to consider applying for a grant that is due June 15, but it’s not too early to start the grant process for the fall deadline, October 15. Here’s the text of the email from CICW:
We are excited to remind you about the Vital Worship, Vital Preaching Grants Program
This thoughtful and vibrant program is for Teacher-Scholars and Worshiping Communities based in Canada and the United States, and seeks to foster, strengthen, and sustain well-grounded public worship.
The next due date for grant applications is June 15, 2024. We encourage you to consider applying.
We welcome grant proposals on a wide range of Christian worship practices, especially proposals related to universal design, cultural engagement, preaching, baptism, and the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper.
Kent and I had two fantastic experiences as grant recipients of CICW. The CICW grants team is eager to work with congregations, Christian universities and seminaries, health care facilities, and scholars to support the public worship life of the Church. The CICW website has all the criteria upfront, gives access to the complete grant proposal requirements, and the online grant form is very user-friendly. One can write a portion and save the work over weeks and months.
As the end of our 50 days of Easter feasting approaches, we also are reaching the end of this series on fourth-century mystagogical catechesis. Today I (Rhoda) will share a few literary gems from Cyril of Jerusalem and Theodore of Mopsuetia on the Eucharist.
First, the commentary of Theodore of Mopsuetia on the kiss of peace draws together the sacrament of baptism with the meal the neophytes had share for the first time, immediately after their baptism at the Easter Vigil.
This kiss which all present exchange constitutes a kind of profession of the unity and charity that exists among them. Each of us gives the Kiss of Peace to the person next to him, and so in effect gives it to the whole assembly, because this act is an acknowledgement that we have all become the single body of Christ our Lord, and so must preserve with one another that harmony that exists among the limbs of a body, loving one another equally, supporting and helping one another, … sympathizing with one another’s sorrows and sharing one another’s joys.
The new birth that we underwent at baptism is unique for this reason, that it joins us into a natural unity; and so we all share the same food when we partake of the same body and the same blood, for we have been linked in the unity of baptism. St. Paul says: ‘Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the same loaf.’ This is why before we approach the sacrament of the liturgy we are required to observe the custom of giving the Kiss of Peace, as a profession of unity and mutual charity.
Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation, 221-22.
Next, Cyril’s description of the dialogue evokes the power of these words while reminding us that this brief exchange is one of the many ways Christians today are joined together with the saints across time and space when we participate in the eucharistic liturgy.
Next the priest says in a loud voice: Let us lift up our hearts. For at this most awesome [phrikodestate] moment we must indeed raise our hearts high to God, not keep them intent on the earth and one earthly matters. So the priest is virtually commanding you all at that moment to lay aside the cares of this life, your domestic worries, and to keep your heart in heaven on God who loves [humanity].
Then you answer: We have them lifted to the Lord. By these words of assent you declare you are at one with him. Now no one should stand there saying with his lips [these words] while in his mind he is preoccupied with worldly thoughts. We must be mindful of God at all times, but if human weakness makes this impossible [!] we should try especially hard at this time.
The priest then says: Let us give thanks to the Lord.For we ought truly to give thanks, because he has called our unworthy persons to this great gift, because he has reconciled us though we were enemies, and because he has counted us worthy of the ‘Spirit of [adoption]’. Then you say: It is right and just. So our giving thanks is a right and just act, whereas God’s action is not guided by what is just; his actions have gone beyond mere justice, for he has treated us generously and reckoned us worthy of such great blessings.
Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation, 90.
With Teddy the Mop (as one of my graduate professors referred to this church father) we have the horizontal aspect of the Eucharist, a meal of unity with all the members of Christ’s body, while Cyril stresses the vertical relationship—our relationship with God made possible because God “reckoned us worthy of such great blessings.” The Eucharist, like baptism, is a sacrament filled with multivalent meanings. In this meal God comes to meet us at every stage and in every circumstance of life. Thanks be to God!
Last week Kent wrote about the post-baptismal anointing in the West (with Ambrose as our source) and its ritual connection with the coming of the Holy Spirit. This week we’ll look at an earlier stratum of baptismal anointing from East Syrian and Armenian sources. In the 1970s liturgical scholar Gabriele Winkler broke new ground in her dissertation work, noting that these earliest sources in Syriac and Armenian have only a pre-baptismal anointing and that this anointing is linked ritually to Jesus’ baptism. She writes:
… in the oldest Syriac documents, Christian baptism is shaped after Christ’s baptism in the Jordan. As Jesus had received the anointing through the divine presence in the appearance of a dove, and was invested as the Messiah, so in Christian baptism every candidate is anointed and, in connection with this anointing, the gift of Spirit is conferred. Therefore the main theme of this prebaptismal anointing is the entry into the eschatological kingship of the Messiah, being in the true sense of the word assimilated in the Messiah-King through this anointing.
Winkler, “The Original Meaning of the Prebaptismal Anointing and its Implications,” Worship 52 (1978): 36.
She points out the many images in these East Syrian and Armenian texts that draw on the Old Testament narratives of the anointing of kings, associated with the coming of the Spirit. She quotes from the Disascalia, “… the Lord in baptism, by the imposition of the hand of bishop, bore witness to each one of you, and uttered His holy voice, saying, ‘Thou art my Son. I this day have begotten you’” (Ps. 2:7). She asserts that this and other references in these East Syrian texts point to “the deeper meaning of this Old Testament imagery: The anointing of the priest-king of the old covenant prefigured the anointing of the Messiah. Jesus is revealed as the Messiah-King at the Jordan through the descent of the Spirit in the appearance of a dove.” Thus, she continues, “It is also no longer puzzling why the anointing, and not the immersion in the water, forms the central part of baptism in the Syriac sources” (Winkler, 36-37).
In support of Winkler’s hypothesis that in the earliest baptismal rituals “Christian baptism is shaped after Christ’s baptism in the Jordan” and the giving of the Holy Spirit was a central meaning of the rite is the word “Christian.” Luke records that “it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christian’” (Acts 11:26). The Greek word “Christos,” translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, means “anointed one.” As a Lutheran steeped in the dominant baptismal motive of Scripture and the Western Church (Romans 6, joined with Christ his death and resurrection), studying with Dr. Winkler 30 years ago opened me to the multivalent gifts of baptism: the forgiveness of sins, the giving of the Holy Spirit, and being chosen by God, begotten as God’s child in this sacrament.
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Image: Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan; Fresco in the Rila Monastery, Rilakloster, Kloster Rila, Рилски манастир, Bulgaria 2009
We are pleased to share with our readers information about an upcoming workshop led by the Rev. Dr. Adam Filipek, which is part of Concordia Seminary’s Faculty Led Workshop series. Dr. Filipek shares our passion for adult faith formation and partnered with us for our online conferences in 2020 and 2021, serving as a breakout session leader twice. We’ve also featured his book, Life in Christ, Rooted, Woven, and Grafted into God’s Story (CPH, 2023) on this blog.
Title: Faith Formation in a Nominally and Post-Christian World
When the church speaks of “Christian formation,” we tend to speak of a classroom setting: Sunday school, Confirmation class, adult instruction and Bible study. Such a perspective runs the risk of treating the Christian faith as primarily intellectual. When that happens, the church can easily be equated with a K-12 school. Many have a mindset of, “When I have learned everything I need to know, then I can be done with church. Like school, I can graduate, move on and never return.” But the Christian faith is not something we simply learn, regurgitate, graduate and move on from. In this workshop, participants will explore how narrative catechesis can be used to cultivate a love of the one true God and a desire to dwell with Him here in time: weekly in the Divine Service and daily in our respective vocations and in eternity where we “appear with Him in glory” and dwell with Him forever.
Several decades ago, one Wednesday evening after a particularly difficult session with a singularly unruly class, the devout lay woman and long-time teacher for fifth- and sixth-grade confirmation instruction at our church had had enough; she quit. Feeling called (reluctantly, like Jonah) to step into the role and finish the school year, I took up my cross and entered the classroom the following Wednesday.
My only clear memory of those weeks as their confirmation teacher was this question posed by Douglas, a pistol of a kid who was rarely engaged in the material and was prone to disruptive behavior: “If it’s the day Jesus died, why do we call it good?” Not one to think quickly in such a situation, all I could say was, “That’s an excellent question, Douglas.” A profound one, indeed. If I were to meet Douglas today, I might answer him with several stanzas from the Holy Week hymn by Venantius Honorius Fortunatus (c. 530-609).
Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle; sing the ending of the fray.
Now above the cross, the trophy, sound the loud triumphant lay;
Tell how Christ, the world’s Redeemer, as a victim won the day.
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God, in mercy saw us fallen, sunk in shame and misery,
felled to death in Eden’s garden, where in pride we claimed the tree;
then another tree was chosen, which the world from death would free.
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Faithful cross, true sign of triumph, be for all the noblest tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom, none in fruit your equal be;
Symbol of the world’s redemption, for your burden makes us free.
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Lutheran Service Book #454, stanza 1; Evangelical Book of Worship #355, stanza 2; Lutheran Book of Worship #118, stanza 4
If I were back in that fifth- and sixth-grade classroom this week, I might point out to Douglas and the whole class the paradoxical nature of the cross, first leading them to an understanding of the cross as symbol of shame and brutal form of capital punishment wielded by the Roman Empire, and then to deeper knowledge of the cross as a “true sign of triumph,” and as a “symbol of the world’s redemption.” I would pray that as Spring brings forth foliage, blossom, and fruit on the many trees lining their streets and in their yards, parks, and orchards, they would compare those to the noblest of trees, the cross, noblest because of the “burden” it bore—the scourged body of Jesus, whose death “makes us free.”
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Photo by Rhoda Schuler; Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Old City of Jerusalem; mosaic behind altar in the Latin Chapel of the Crucifixion; Jesus being nailed to the cross; March 5, 2023.
It is not too late to register for the Institute of Liturgical Studies (ILS) held at Valparaiso University, April 9 – 11. Kent and Rhoda will be leading a pre-meeting seminar on adult faith formation on Tuesday afternoon, April 9, 2024.
Here is the description of the three-hour seminar:
Adult Faith Formation: A Prophetic Challenge to Religious Consumerism
A consumer culture challenges the church on two fronts. From within, an “attractional” pattern for outreach has commodified the church and its message. From without, the marketplace is recognizing the spiritual void in our secular culture and is pitching its wares with promises to provide “a sense of identity, purpose, meaning, and community” (1).
We are convinced that robust adult faith formation practices and rich rituals are a prophetic challenge to these internal and external issues. This seminar will offer background material on adult faith formation, facilitate small group studies and discussions, and lead participants through experiential learning on ritual.
1. Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, 131, 107.
For information about the full ILS conference, “Creation, Not Commodity: The Church’s Liturgy in a Consumer Culture,” April 9 – 11, click here.
From this page you can access the full schedule, descriptions of the plenaries and seminars (the same link), descriptions of the workshops, and lists of local accommodations and restaurants. Meals can also be purchased in the dining hall, conveniently located in the Harre Union, where the plenary sessions are held.
Registration cost is $325.00; for first-time attendees and retired people, registration is only $200.00. It’s a great deal!
Kent ended last week’s post by describing baptism as a “dramatic joining to the Lord Jesus Christ, by renouncing the Evil One, adhering to Jesus, and being washed to new life by drowning and dying in the baptismal tomb and womb.” He quoted extensively from Cyril of Jerusalem and John Chrysostom. Yarnold’s book, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation, also includes mystagogical sermons by Ambrose of Milan and Theodore of Mopsuestia, who also use the metaphors of womb and tomb as they reveal the mysteries of baptism. All page references are to Yarnold.
Ambrose of Milan: Tomb Metaphor (drawing on the images of death and resurrection from Romans 6)
To begin his third Sermon on the Sacraments, Ambrose summarizes the previous day’s sermon: “Yesterday the subject of our instruction was the font, which has the shape and appearance of a sort of tomb” (120). Ambrose begins the second sermon with a series of biblical stories that include water. First, he notes the pool at the Sheep Gate, where the angel’s stirring of the water brings healing to one (“How much greater is the grace of the Church in which all those who go down into the water are saved,” 112). Then he reviews narratives from the previous day: Naaman the leper, healed in the Jordan; the flood; the crossing of the Red Sea. A curious choice of narrative follows: Elisha throwing the axe handle in the water after losing the iron head, which then miraculously floats. Ambrose’s allegorical interpretation is that “in the cross of Christ [i.e., the wooden handle] … every [one’s] sickness is lightened” (114). Finally, he comes to an extended discourse on the human condition (Gen 2–3) and its remedy (Romans 6).
Adam “was cast out of paradise” and “became subject to death…. The sentence was divine, and it could not be remitted by humankind. The remedy was found. It was that man should die and rise again. Why? So that what had formerly served as a sentence, should now serve as a gift. And what is this but death? ‘How can this be?,’ you ask. Because death, when it comes, puts an end to sin. When we die, we do indeed stop sinning…. But in order that God’s gift might continue for ever … Christ invented the resurrection, in order to restore the heavenly gift which had been lost through the deceit of the serpent” (116).
“So the apostle exclaims, as you have just heard in the reading, ‘Whoever is baptized, is baptized in the death of Jesus.’ What does ‘in the death’ mean? It means that just as Christ died, so you will taste death; that just as Christ died to sin and lives to God, so through the sacrament of baptism you are dead to the old enticements of sin and have risen again through the grace of Christ. … So you are crucified with him, you are fastened to Christ, you are fastened by the nails of our Lord Jesus Christ lest the devil pull you away. May Christ’s nail continue to hold you, for human weakness seeks to pull you away” (119).
Our Lutheran readers will likely resonate with this language of death and resurrection, for it was Luther’s preferred image for baptism, and it is so appropriate for catechetical formation at this time in the church year. For those of us deeply wedded to the language of Romans 6, Theodore of Mopsuestia is a wake-up call to the multivalent images in Scripture about baptism.
Theodore of Mopsuestia: Tomb and Womb Metaphors Mixed (Romans 6 and John 3)
After a quick summary of the previous day’s homily, Theodore moves from the sealing prior to the baptism to unfolding the meaning of the baptism in water by juxtaposing the opposing language of “new birth,” death, and “rising from the dead,” saying,
“Baptism contains the signs of the new birth which will be manifested in reality when you rise from the dead and recover all that death has stolen from you … You will gain the new birth by rising from the dead to a second existence … you will gain this in reality when the time comes for you to rise again to your new birth; but now you have faith in Christ … and … you must be content with receiving symbols and signs … which affords you certainty of sharing in the blessings to come” (181).
He continues by recounting Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about being “born from above” (John 3), interpreting the passage by saying that Jesus “speaks of the Spirit because this birth is due to the Spirit’s operation” (182) before switching to Romans 6, linking the ritual of baptism to this text:
“So when I am baptized and put my head under the water, I wish to receive the death and burial of Christ our Lord, and I solemnly profess my faith in this resurrection; when I come up out of the water, this is a sign that I believe am already risen” (183).
The bishop’s blessing of the water transforms it into “the water of second birth” by calling down the Holy Spirit to “make it capable of begetting this awesome birth, making it a womb for sacramental birth” (185). He continues,
“the one baptized settles in the water as in a kind of womb, like a seed showing no sign of an immortal nature; but once baptized and endowed with the divine grace of the Spirit, his nature is reshaped completely. Once mortal, it becomes immortal; once corruptible, it becomes incorruptible; once changing, it becomes unchanging; by the almighty power of him whom who forms it” (186).
Returning to the invocation of the Spirit upon the water, he says, “In this way the water becomes an awesome womb of the second birth; in this way all who go down into the water are formed again by the grace of the Holy Spirit and born again in another, higher nature …” (187).
Two weeks ago Kent introduced this current series, Awe-Inspiring Rites, during which we are gleaning treasures from early church writers about the rituals associated with the adult catechumenate. Kent wrote about the exorcisms, important rituals during Lent, the period of Enlightenment. Today we’ll examine the traditio, handing over of the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer to the catechumens. The Creed was used in the baptismal liturgy, and so candidates for baptism needed to learn this text by heart for the redditio, the giving back, as their confession of faith in the baptismal ritual.
We have 18 catechetical Lenten sermons by Cyril of Jerusalem, 13 of which are on the creed, phrase by phrase. According Yarnold, the usual practice of “handing over” was done orally, and “no one must write it down” (Ambrose, Explanatio Symboli, 9, referenced in Yarnold, 13, fn. 53). The Creed and the Lord’s Prayer were treated as “secret” or “mysteries” to which only those initiated (or about to be) had access. Those readers old enough to remember the stressful “questioning” on Luther’s Catechism prior to the Rite of Confirmation will be able to empathize with the nervous jitters of fourth-century baptismal candidates. We see the pastoral side of Augustine in this quote:
Today week you will have to repeat what you have learnrt today. You godparents are responsible for teaching you … No one need be nervous and so fail to repeat the words. Do not worry, I am your father. I do not carry a strap or a cane like a schoolmaster.
Quoted in Yarnold, 13.
There was greater variation regarding the Lord’s Prayer; in some areas, it was handed over during Lent; in other regions, teaching the Lord’s Prayer was part of the post-baptismal mystagogy. Theodore of Mopsuetia (in Syria) is an example of the former practice:
I have already instructed you sufficiently about the rites which according to ancient tradition the candidates for baptism must celebrate. When you present yourselves to give in your names, in the hope of finding a dwelling-place in heaven, the exorcisms are, so to say, a lawsuit with the devil; you are freed from slavery to him by God’s judgment. So you recite the word of the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer; and there and then through the mediation of the bishops you make an undertaking to persevere in love towards God’s being.
Quoted in Yarnold, 168.
Of course, today there is nothing “secret” about these texts, but we know the value of learning these texts “by heart.” They are there for us at the deathbed of a loved one, in the hospital pre-op room before emergency surgery, for all those times when words fail us. And when the memory of loved ones fades, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer can be one of the ways we still connect with these dear ones. To know these texts, Theodore of Mopsuetia tells us, give us power over the devil and enables us to persevere in love towards God.
Today’s photos are from the Church of the Pater Noster on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Empress Helena built a church there in the fourth century over a cave which, according to tradition, was the secret place where Jesus taught his disciples (perhaps commemorating the eschatological discourse in the Synoptic Gospels). That church was destroyed by the Persians in the seventh century; the site became associated with the Lord’s Prayer during the Crusader period (twelfth century). Today the walls of the compound surrounding the excavations of the fourth-century church are adorned with ceramic tile plaques in various languages, a symbol of the ecumenical (worldwide) church.
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Photo credits: Church of the Pater Noster, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem
