Easter Eve at the Baptistery

On the night before Easter, 387 AD, a thirty-two-year-old rhetoric professor stepped into the octagonal baptistery beside Milan Cathedral. His name was Augustine, and he had spent half his lifetime running.

He had chased wisdom through Manichaean philosophy. He had pursued pleasure in a long series of affairs. He had grasped for status in the imperial courts of Rome. His mother, Monica, had wept and prayed for him for seventeen years, until a bishop assured her, "The son of so many tears shall not perish."

Now, standing waist-deep in cold water, Augustine felt Bishop Ambrose press his shoulders beneath the surface. When he rose, dripping and shivering, the congregation began to sing. He later wrote that in that moment, all the anxiety of his former life simply melted away.

He had done nothing yet to earn it. He had written no Confessions, founded no monasteries, shaped no theology that would mark Western Christianity for a thousand years. He was simply a man, soaking wet, being claimed.

That is exactly what happened at the Jordan. Before Jesus preached a single sermon or healed one leper, the heavens tore open and the voice of the Almighty thundered over the water: "You are my Son, the Beloved." Identity before achievement. The Father's delight before the ministry began. In the waters of baptism, God does not wait for our resume. He speaks our name.