On the day of our baptism, we came to the church alive with physical life but dead in supernatural life. It was because of this fact that our soul was dead with sin that we, or our godparents, had come to ask for eternal life. Then, we went through the ritual of the baptismal ceremony during which we underwent a symbolic death. The pouring of the water on our heads was like a burial in water from which we then rose again to a new life. The ceremony was a symbolic dying with Christ and a symbolic rising with Christ to a new life. What was not symbolic was that, when the water was poured upon our heads, the death of sin was driven from our souls and a new life started to dwell there, a supernatural life. This is what St. Paul means in today’s epistle when he says, “we were buried with Him by means of Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ has arisen from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.” What this means is that, before Baptism, our soul was not capable of doing anything in the supernatural order. It could not move in the supernatural realm and was dead to that realm. We know that an animal is dead when it does not move, when it does not have self-movement. We go up to a dog that we are not sure whether it is sleeping or dead. We move it with our foot and nothing happens. Because the dog does not move, we conclude it does not have physical life. Our soul before Baptism was like that in the supernatural order. We were not able to make any supernatural movement. After Baptism, our soul becomes alive with a new type of life, a supernatural life. That life does not get rid of our physical life or lay on top of our physical life; rather, it goes inside of it. The life of God goes inside of our spiritual soul and gives it new capabilities. It goes inside of our mind and gives our mind the ability to believe the mysteries of the faith. It goes inside of our will and gives it the ability to choose a supernatural good, to love God above all things, to seek the salvation of our soul above all things. St. Paul focuses particularly on one new ability that the new life of Christ in our soul gives us the ability to do: it gives us the capacity to be dead to sin.
