Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time—Romans 6:3-4, 8-11

In last week’s second reading, Saint Paul highlighted some of the parallels between Adam and Jesus. Adam’s free choice affected all of us negatively, and Jesus’ free choice can affect all of us positively forever. In this weeks’ second reading, Saint Paul brings up another parallel. Adam’s sin brought death into the world, but Jesus’ redemption brings about new life through a mystical participation in his death. That happens in baptism.

Now, if you have been baptized, you have already died once. That’s right: baptism is a mystical death and resurrection into new life. We’re used to thinking of it as a new life event, but most of us probably don’t think of baptism as a death. That is exactly how Saint Paul describes it. He says we were buried with Jesus in baptism. You see, it’s not just a symbolic ritual of bringing someone into the Church. A real death occurs through the waters of baptism.

That has been God’s pattern throughout the Bible. At the time of Noah, the whole world died in the waters of the flood before being born to new life. At the time of the Exodus, Israel the Enslaved People died in the Red Sea and came out the other side born into a new life of freedom. When Joshua led the people into the Promised Land, Israel the Wandering People died in the Jordan River and came out the other side as Israel the Inheritor of the Promised Land. John the Baptist inaugurated a New Exodus by calling people back to the same Jordan River to confess their sins and be baptized in the water. Jesus himself was baptized into that water and took all the sins therein upon himself. At the end of his earthly life, Jesus commanded his apostles to baptize all nations.

The sacramental baptism that Jesus commanded is what makes Christian life a new life. When I was just a few weeks old, Jason the Child Born in Sin died in the waters of baptism and rose to new life as Jason the Redeemed of the Lord. As Saint Paul points out, if we have already died with Jesus, we can reasonably expect to live with him, to be raised from physical death with him. The challenge now for me and for you is to live in the new life and not in the old life. Our lives should look different—the very meaning of “holy”—from those who have not died to sin. We can let our light shine, to attract others, because the light isn’t ours anyway. If we have died with Jesus and we let him live in us, it’s his light that shines through us. We’ve died already, so now it’s time to truly live.