Roseanne Sullivan, 2/08/2003

Easter is near, and the time of your RCIA preparation is almost complete. You have a great event to look forward to this coming Easter. Your initiation will be complete by the time the Easter vigil Mass is over. By the time the sun rises on Easter morning, you will be full members of the Catholic Church. And you will also be full members of the Christian community of Holy Cross Church here in Northside San Jose. Your joining us is one more great cause for Alleluiahs! Of course the greatest great cause for our Alleluiahs at Easter is the Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Church always experiences joy when we celebrate Christ's Resurrection at Easter. And that joy is made greater when newcomers join us. According to the account in the gospel of St. Mark, before Christ was taken up to heaven, He said the following:

All Catholics are Jesus' followers, and all of us are expected to make disciples. When you joined this RCIA program, how many of you know that you were about to become disciples? Here is something else you have to look forward to: when your discipleship is complete, you too will go on to make other disciples, as Our Lord asked us all to do.

All of us involved in the RCIA program are happy to share our faith and to welcome you to our community. What you are about to experience is a rite of passage. It is good to spend time thinking about the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, because the feast of Easter is so closely tied to your initiation into the Church.

What's Baptism Got to Do With Resurrection?

Now that we've established that you are disciples of Christ, here is something else you might not have realized when you started this process: when you are baptized you die and you are buried! According to Barard Marthaler in his book, The Creed, "'baptizesthai' quite literally means 'to be drowned.'" But, thank God, death and burial aren't the end of it, because our death and burial in baptism is shared with Christ. And, after having shared His death and burial, we also rise again with Him. St. Paul wrote:

We die to our old life of attachment to the things of this world, we are buried with Christ, and with Christ we rise into our new life with Him, and in Him.

What's the Creed Got to Say About It?

I have referred to the Creed a couple of times and to a book called The Creed by Berard Marthaler. The book tells about how the Church arrived at the Creed and what modern Bible critics are saying about each of its statements. A lot of what I'm saying tonight is based on insights that Marthaler gathered into that book.

By now, you have all learned the Creed. And you'll recite it during the Easter vigil and during every Mass you attend. As you know, there are two forms of the Creed in wide use in the Church. The shorter, simpler form is called the Apostle's Creed. The longer more-complex Nicean Creed that you'll be reciting during Easter vigil contains additional statements of belief that the Church needed to add to counter some incorrect theories about the nature of Christ that were circulating in the early centuries of the Church. The Creed is the statement of the core beliefs that we embrace, that define our Catholic Christian faith. The word Creed comes from the Latin word Credo, which is commonly understood to mean, "I believe."

But there is more to it than that. The roots of the word credo include the meanings of love and commitment. The full meaning of Credo/Creed can be seen as: "I give my heart to these things." To bring in even more depth to our understanding of what it means for us to say the Creed, Marthaler quotes the great St. Augustine and others, and he writes that the Creed is a kind of symbol or password by which Christians know each other. What do you think of that idea? Can you imagine the Creed as a kind of password that Christians could use today?

Let me read you a quote from Marthaler, "Christians are by definition an Easter people"; their faith rests on the reality expressed in the creedal statement ON THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN IN FULFILLMENT OF THE SCRIPTURES . "In the early days of the Church, the person being baptized was immersed three times, which called to mind the three days between Christ's death and Resurrection. Each immersion was done after the new Christian recited one part of an early form of the Creed.

This important concept of death and burial during Baptism and all the symbolism that came into play in the earlier Baptismal rites of the Church are some of the reasons why the Church is in some places is returning to baptism by immersion.

There is a lot more that could be said about Christian initiation, resurrection, and the Creed, but we have to stop here. But before I do, I want to remind you again that the Creed also says, "We look for the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting." The resurrection from the waters of Baptism is just a preview of our resurrection to come. There is a lot more that could be said about that also! Let us pray.

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