Baptism: Death and Resurrection in Christ

Reading in Colossians 2:6-15, especially verses 12 and 13 ...

The divine, salvific mystery is that God exchanges Christ's death for our death, such that our death is no longer our own but is Christ's. We must make no mistake about this. We die. Indeed, apart from Christ we are already dead spiritually. This side of the second coming, ineluctably and certainly, even if we are in Christ, we will eventually die physically as well. Yet in this God-acted mystery of salvation, which we experience sacramentally in baptism, we no longer die in ourselves; we die in Christ. God translates us from that death which is our death to that death which is Christ's, which becomes our life in the mystery of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.

Summer Rain

Summer rain --

against the inscrutable screen

of beech and big-tooth aspen,

fractal leafing seeming endless --

silvers the massed cloud down

to earth, to soil and pavement,

and all creatures here below,

of life sore beauty-parched.