Today's most sacred solemnity is called in Hebrew phase, in Greek pascha, and in Latin is interpreted as 'passing over.' This the Jews celebrated after the long yoke of captivity, when departing out of Egypt. Behold, even now the people of God is set free; behold, again the phase is kept, again the passing over is celebrated. How is the passing over celebrated again? By the very same passage: from bondage to freedom, from iniquity to righteousness, from guilt to grace, from death to life, through the saving waters. You can once more perform the ancient miracles of the Red Sea by the arm of the Most High. The soul enters the waters of life, as though into the waters reddened and consecrated by the blood of Christ. It enters full of deadly debts, and shortly after departs by the happy shipwrecks of its sins.
In one and the same element of the saving wave, the sinner perishes as the Egyptian, while the whole of righteousness abides as the Hebrew. The guilty is washed away, the guilt is abolished. Wonderful is the Lord's clemency, which recalls to purity the irrevocable crime and the ingrained stains of sins, and gives life to the sinner while the sin dies. Behold, a man is plunged into the font, and by a secret gift the guilt alone of the man is condemned. The criminal is anointed, and the crime alone is extinguished. In which manner is fulfilled that prophetic oracle: 'And the water,' it says, 'covered those who afflicted them; and not one of them remained' (Ps. 105). One of them, that first and only original debt, the wave of the sacred font emptied out. It slew that singular crime of the first parent.
In this place the magnificence of so great a gift displays the blessed presence of the Trinity. Behold, countless evils imprinted upon old and recent wounds, scarcely to be expiated by the perpetual torments of Gehenna, are purged by a threefold immersion. In one moment, God working swiftly, amid the bosom of the waters the fuel of the flames is consumed. And therefore the Apostle says: 'We are buried together with Christ through baptism into death.' Souls are plunged into the sacred flood; they come to the borders of death and life. And those which had been liable to perdition by that rising of their first birth, are reborn by a saving setting. They are stripped of the foulness of their invisible old age, and, contracted by the deformity of sins, they are clothed with the beauty of heavenly infancy.
We are sometimes astonished at the greatness of the novelty, whenever we hear or read that the Lord Jesus Christ was begotten from a woman alone, without the partnership of a man. Behold, now, with the laws of nature set aside, countless multitudes throughout all the earth are brought forth from the single bosom of the font, as by a virgin's birth. Let the Church of Christ rejoice, which after the likeness of blessed Mary is enriched by the working of the Holy Spirit and is made the mother of a divine offspring. Let the blind error of the unbelievers therefore cease to assert that the woman who without a man was able to bear a son could not remain a virgin. Behold how many and of how great ones the mother Church, mother and bride, has brought forth for you in a single night, fruitful from her bosom of integrity.
You marveled a little while ago at the man born without corruption: marvel now at the one reborn, which is no less new. Let us compare, if it please you, these two mothers, and the generation of each will strengthen our faith in the other. The overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, coming down in secret, filled Mary, and the infusion of the Holy Spirit wedded the Church in the blessed font. Mary bore a son without sin, and the Church consumed sins in those whom she begot. Through Mary was born that which was in the beginning; through the Church was reborn that which in the beginning had perished. She bore for many; the Church bore peoples. She, as we know, remaining a virgin, brought forth a son once; the Church ever brings forth her Bridegroom through the rod of virginity.
That, therefore, which you thought a singular miracle from all ages, recognize now as a yearly gift. If you doubt that you will rise again, marvel at the offspring within you, whom a little while ago you knew as the heir of death. Where are those who say there is a 'genesis' or 'fate,' by which a part of mankind is driven into sin by a violent necessity? Where are those who say there are souls which, born with damnation, are snatched away to death by the predetermination of an evil nature that compels them? First of all, if it is so, why do both human and divine law condemn the wicked, unless it be because the fault of the will lies in the guilt? For justice does not punish what nature compels. But suppose it were so. Suppose someone were assigned to perdition by a prejudged lot of birth. Behold, he descends into the font as into a tomb.
Even if his nature had been stained, it would surely have vanished into nothing. The worse origin would have received its end, because a better life was taking its beginning. Here now we see how our God redeems us from the hand of the enemy. The whole man is washed, absolved, made new. When the devil comes, he no longer recognizes his own, whom nature, emptied and dispossessed, has emancipated into the adoption of Christ, and has poured over into the bosom of the Father out of the right of the evil persuader. Beyond doubt, the grace of the reborn has taken away his liberty. Nor can those born in a second nativity any longer be liable to their first origin. Why now, whoever you are, do you thrust upon me the natural bond of Adam, when you acknowledge me reborn in Christ?
Why, I say, do you set another's sin against me, where you profess that even my own is forgiven me? Why do you set against me the debt of the old bond, when you see it emptied by a new pledge? For we made a pledge and a covenant with Christ in baptism, that man should keep for Him his innocence, and that He should render to man glory; that the servant should offer service, and the Lord should prepare a kingdom. What can the seducer of another's household do amid these things? He sees his once-servants, unjustly seized by him, handed over to freedom through the acknowledgment of Christ, and himself fallen by the prejudgment of the case, and himself incurring the peril of claiming too much. How has he incurred the peril of claiming too much? How of claiming too much?
Indeed, when man was owed to him through the obedience of sin, he, deceived by the appearance of a man, laid claim to God, and presumed to lay parricidal hands upon the very Ruler of heaven. And suddenly, through so great a crime, he incurred also the charge of treason against majesty, and thus, being outlawed, he lost the man whom he violently held. Outlawed, I say: for at once, upon the very man whom redemption recalled to his origin, Christ affixed His own titles. This is that cross which we carry marked upon our foreheads, as upon the royal doorposts (Exod. 12); which the Lord, the chief and lawful Emperor, has most justly stamped upon a possession received, so that we may truly be called the house of God. For God speaks to man through His Apostle:
'You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you' (1 Cor. 3). For these reasons the overweening and proud one deserved to be outlawed, since already, as has been said, he had appeared guilty of treason against majesty in the world. For in the heights, dear to his Maker, then, forgetful of his Maker, he coveted a share of divinity; now he stretches out bloody hands against the Author of things, by the habit of impiety. And thus the just condemnation of the robber became the free manumission of the captive. And therefore now he groans, envies, goes about, to see whether perchance by theft he might carry off from us the instrument of that very manumission, and the acquired charter of liberty.
With all his strength, therefore, he strives to see how he may strip man of the privilege granted him, and, by the working of sin, to prejudge the freedman as ungrateful. But our charter, dearly beloved, is our faith, inscribed on the pages of the heart. Our liberty is the grace of God and our manner of life. Our liberty, I say, is the worship of religion, the righteousness of work, the purity of chastity. Let us defend this with all vigilance of mind against the devil: for he is the more corrupting in assailing the treasure of the soul, the more he knows it to be precious. And therefore, because the exile from heaven remembers what is done in heaven, how great a reward is prepared for trembling man by the words of God, the magnitude of his jealousy reveals it. He proclaims the glory while he exercises his envy.
And he is the enemy of the benefits of Him who promises that man, taken from the earth, shall reign with Him in heaven, so that the blessedness of faithful mortals may pass into the confusion of the rebellious angels.