By Rev. Deacon Drew Maxwell
Consecration can be a reminder of our own baptisms and an encouragement to truly live our lives in the light of God’s Kingdom.
The fact is, any consecration, whether it is a consecration of our church or the consecration of our persons, is an end and a beginning; a death and a birth. Our baptismal ceremony is a mystical recreation of Christ’s death and resurrection. In the font at baptism, the priest immerses us in the water three times not because it is nice to do things in threes in the Church, but because we are reenacting Christ’s three-day burial and his glorious resurrection. Initially, our baptisms are an act in which we become dead to the world and its ways. In the beginning of the baptismal service, we, “renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his worship, and all his angels, and all his pomp.” These are the exorcisms in which the priest invokes God’s grace on us so that God can banish from us all sin and evil. Our baptisms are an end, a death in effect, to a sinful and broken way of life that is self-centered and greedy.
However, our baptisms are also a beginning! They are the beginning of a new life. This new life begins when we are washed clean and made holy. This new life is the life in which we are given the Holy Spirit when we are anointed with chrism during the chrismation service. This new life is initiated in the tonsuring of our hair as the first sacrifice that we offer to God as newly –illuminated Christians. The entire baptismal service is best summed up in an early prayer during the service, when the priest asks God to, “Strip away the old creature, and renew him (the candidate) for life everlasting. Fill him with the power of Your Holy Spirit, for union with Your Christ: that he may no longer be a child of the body, but a child of Your kingdom…”
Yet, perhaps even more key to understanding the service of baptism and its significance are the three processions that are done around the baptismal font with the newly-baptized Christian after the baptism, chrismation and tonsure. These processions are the hinge which enables the newly-illumined Christian to enter into their new lives fully. In fact, Fr. Schmemann wrote the following regarding the processions near the end of the service, “Our first task then is to show that … the post-baptismal procession remains an essential part of the baptismal liturgy – indeed, the ultimate epiphany of its meaning.” [Schmemann, Of Water & the Spirit, 111]
Why did Fr. Schmemann write this? He goes on to say that when we sing during those post-baptismal processions the words, “As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” we are ushering the newly-baptized Christian into her new life in Christ. The first thing that the newly-baptized does after this procession is to hear the teaching of the Church in the Apostolos and Gospel readings, and then, crucially, they take the Holy Eucharist.
Baptism is not a discrete moment that is over in a breath. Instead, it is the breath of the Holy Spirit descending on us and initiating us into a lifelong process of holiness which begins immediately by learning about God and participating in the sacrament of renewal which is communion. When we are baptized, we are reborn into a new life which seeks to be “in the world,” without being, “of the world,” as Jesus said in his final prayer to God the Father while he was on earth, “I have given them Your word, and the world has hated them because they do not
belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking You to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as a I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.” [John 17: 14-19].
This new life into which we are thrust is a major challenge in which we must have the help of the Holy Spirit. It involves a life which seeks to focus on the perfection of our prayer, almsgiving, charitable works, and regular commitment to the life of the Church through worship, sacraments, and social gatherings. This is not an easy life because it does not reflect the priorities of the world around us, a world which is focused on egocentric pursuits like the accumulation of wealth, the fulfillment of human appetites, and the pursuit of individual “happiness,” all of which prove to be incredibly fleeting and ephemeral. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, one of the early Fathers of the 4th century who wrote extensively on baptism, knew this. During one Bright Week, he was teaching the newly-baptized about the sacrament in which they had just participated when he wrote, “For as Christ after His baptism, and the descent of the Holy Spirit, went forth and vanquished the adversary, so likewise, having, after Holy Baptism and the Mystical Chrism, put on the whole armor of the Holy Spirit, you stand against the power of the enemy, and vanquish it, saying, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” [Mystagogical Catechesis 3, 4.] Because we have the gift of the Holy Spirit in each of our baptisms, we are truly equipped to handle what the world throws at us and able to participate fully in the Kingdom of God of which God gives us a foretaste here and now! However, we must learn to trust in the power of the Holy Spirit in order to achieve this.
How does the consecration of [Saint Sophia Cathedral] apply to all of this? The consecration service is nothing more, and more importantly nothing less, than the baptism of a church building. In much the same way as a baptism of a person, the baptism of a building is the birth of a physical space to a new and transfigured existence in the Kingdom of God. By the relics of the martyrs and the anointing of the Spirit through the hands of the bishop, Assumption is girded with spiritual armor so that it can resist the ways of the world while also providing a haven for worship in which the heavenly banquet can be truly experienced whenever we together celebrate God’s mystical and holy Liturgy.
Additionally, the consecration will provide for each and every one of us a reminder of our own baptisms. Every moment we spend in our newly-consecrated and illumined Church will be an opportunity to remember God’s anointing of us with the Holy Spirit; every moment will enable us to more fully trust in His power to help us live in His Kingdom.
Let me conclude with the thoughts of St. Gregory the Theologian from one of his most famous poems, “One is the nature, immeasurable, uncreated, atemporal, excellent, free, and co-venerable, one God in three effulgence’s, making the world go round. By these I am awakened, another new young man, when in the font death gets buried, and I come back racing to the light. For the three-fold Godhead made me rise out a light bearer.” [On the Holy Spirit, 41-46.] Looking forward to the consecration in October, may we anticipate our church becoming a perfect bearer of the Light, and in the process, may we ourselves become holy Light bearers as well!
~Adapted from, How is the Consecration like our Baptisms? By Rev. Deacon Drew Maxwell, “Orthodox Oasis Magazine, Consecration Edition,” Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, Scottsdale, AZ, http://www.assumptionaz.org/assets/files/Oasis/June.July2011.pdf.
