Baptismal Poem
A poetic inscription on the Lateran Baptistery in Rome gives a wonderful series of theological metaphors for baptism. John F. Baldovin notes that the inscription is “often attributed to the mid-fifth century pope, Sixtus III.” The inscription reads:
“Here is born in Spirit-soaked fertility/ a brood destined for another City,/ begotten by God’s blowing/ and borne upon this torrent/ by the Church their virgin mother./ Reborn in these depths they reach for/ heaven’s realm,/ the born-but-once unknown by felicity./ This spring is life that floods the world,/ the wounds of Christ its awesome source,/ Sinner sink beneath this sacred surf/ that swallows age and spits out youth./ Sinner here scour away down to innocence,/ for they know no enmity who are by/ one font, one Spirit, one faith made one./ Sinner, shudder not at sin’s kind and number,/ for those born here are holy” (The Oxford History of Christian Worship, pgs. 93-94, translated by Aidan Kavanagh).
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