Baptism is a symbol of Christ's Passion.
To be baptized, you were led down to the font of holy baptism just as Christ was taken down from the cross, and placed in the tomb. Each of you was asked, “Do you believe in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit?” You made the profession of faith that brings salvation, you were plunged into the water to be baptized, and three times you rose again. This symbolized the three days Christ spent in the tomb.
As our Savior spent three days and three nights in the depths of the earth, so your first rising from the water of the baptismal font represented the first day, and your first immersion represented the first night. At night a man cannot see, but in the day, he walks in the light. So, when you were immersed in the water it was like night for you, and you could not see, but when you rose again, it was like coming into broad daylight. At the same time, you died, and, immediately, you were born again to new life; the saving water was both your tomb and soon after, your mother.
A phrase from the Psalms is very appropriate here. It speaks of a time to give birth, and a time to die. For you, however, it was the reverse: you had a time to die, and then, a time to be born, although in fact both events took place one after the other, and your birth immediately followed your death.
This is something amazing and unheard of! But it was not we who actually died, were buried, and rose again. Rather, we only did these things symbolically, but we have been saved in actual fact. It is Christ who was crucified, who was buried and who rose again, and all this has been credited to us. While we share in his sufferings only symbolically, we gain salvation in reality. What boundless love for men! Christ’s undefiled hands were pierced by the nails; he suffered the pain. I experience no pain, no anguish, yet he freely grants me salvation by the sharing in his sufferings.
Let no one imagine that baptism consists only in the forgiveness of sins, and in the grace of adoption as God’s children. Our baptism is not like the baptism of John, which conferred only the forgiveness of sins. We know perfectly well that baptism, besides washing away our sins, and bringing us the gift of the Holy Spirit, is a symbol of the sufferings of Christ. This is why Paul exclaims: Do you not know that when we were baptized into Christ Jesus we were, by the same action, sharing in his death? By baptism we went with him into the tomb.
Excerpts from the Jerusalem Catecheses.
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