633 sligo avenue, silver spring, md 20910
633 sligo avenue, silver spring, md 20910
Rev. Susan G. Astarita
April 16, 2006
I wish a joyful and blessed Easter to you all. Alleluia! I give thanks for the gifts of all Ascensionites offered this Holy Week to support our collective Passion journey. It has been a moving and meaningful week.
Today we renew our solemn baptismal vows and welcome Elizabeth Mary and James Patrick Cavanaugh, who by water and the Holy Spirit have been sealed as Christ's own forever, into the Body of Christ. In this sacrament of holy baptism, we see an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace.
Outwardly we see the visible, human-created, but God initiated element, water and holy oil. The outward and visible sign is God's guarantee, visible, tangible and real. The unseen dimension is God's grace actively and continuously at work in our lives.
In our baptism we encounter Christ, because Jesus is the original sacrament: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us." Jesus came into the world as the outward and visible sign -- fully human, visible, hostorically embodied -- a sign of the inward and spiritual grace of the fully divine God. Just as Christ was the sure and certain sign of God's grace, the sacrament of baptism is the sure and certain sign through which we receive that grace. We publicly proclaim our adoption as God's children and celebrate being claimed as Christ's own beginning a new life in the Holy Spirit.
Today we renew the symbol of God's saving grace, of God's almighty hand that reaches out to claim us and change our lives forever.
Today is truly a festival day that the Lord has made -- let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Faithfully,
Mother Susan +