Word of the Week

4th Sunday in Easter

White: Leukaino: (Gk.): meaning, “to make white”, or “whiten”

The CCC draws our attention to the effects of Baptism in any discussion where one becomes “white” in Christ. The CCC states: “In the waters of Baptism, we have been "washed . . . sanctified . . . justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor.6:11). Our Father calls us to holiness in the whole of our life, and since "he is the source of [our] life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and . . . sanctification” (1 Cor.1:30), both his glory and our life depend on the hallowing of his name in us and by us. Such is the urgency of our first petition” (CCC, 2813).

The Greek Lukaino can be found two times in the New Testament. The first from the gospel of Mark in his account of the Transfiguration (Mk.9:3), and the second from the hand of John in the Book of Revelation (Rev.7:14). Off the top, I note the importance of the descriptors that Mark’s uses to describe the “whiteness” of Christ: “glistening”, and “intensely”. Here, Mark describes the transcendent purity of Christ. In the book of Revelation, John describes the blood of the Lamb that washes the robes of the saints. This is a most intriguing and paradoxical teaching of the Catholic Faith. Typically, we wash color from clothing with detergent in order for it to be white, but here we have the image of cloth being cleaned with the blood of Christ. This Christian washing is that of Baptism (cf. above). Point in fact, we are sanctified and made new in Christ by the blood of his sacrifice. Consequently, we are to walk in the pure cloth of Christ (cf. Rev.3:4) by uniting ourselves to Christ’s own way of the cross (cf. Rom.12:1-3). Furthermore, those in antiquity who washed themselves in the blood of the lamb are regarded as the men and woman of the Christian faith who have offered their lives in heroic charity on the battlefield of good verses evil as martyrs. Consequently, this Fourth Sunday of the Easter season, affords us the opportunity to consider a most important theme found often in the liturgical calendar--martyrdom.

Among many Christians, martyrdom is not a popular topic, and yet it lies at the heart of our baptismal call, the call to witness (comes from the Gk. marteria). We must project our Christian vocation into the arena of good verses evil, the battleground of hope verses despair; the theatre of love verses hate; and the stage of slavery to God verses slavery to Satan. It is upon understanding the Catholic faith as the unfolding drama of salvation history that we can begin to capture the essence of the call to lay our lives down each and every day—in witness to Christ!

 

“…We seek and ask that we who were sanctified in Baptism may persevere in what we have begun to be. And we ask this daily, for we need sanctification daily, so that we who fail daily may cleanse away our sins by being sanctified continually…We pray that this sanctification may remain in us.”

--St. Cyprian

Primary Texts Consulted

•  Catholic Bible. Suggested trans. Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
•  Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, 1997.

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