THE BAPTISMAL GARMENT

          Easter bonnets and other finery perk us all up for the feast, but the most significant article of clothing in the Easter season is the white garment worn by the newly baptized. “See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity. With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.” Those words accompany the giving of the white garment after baptism.

          This custom dates back to the earliest days of our church. Adults and children who presented themselves for baptism were led naked into a pool of water. Rising up, they were rubbed with the sweet-smelling oil of chrism and then clothed with a white garment. They wore that garment to church, like a uniform, every day for a week. On the Sunday after Easter (which used to be called Dominica in albis, or the Sunday of the white garments), they wore them for the last time till Pentecost, or “Whitsunday.” Today the custom is more ceremonial than pragmatic. The white garment used to serve two practical purposes: It re-clothed the naked body coming up out of the font, and it identified the newly baptized for the sake of the community.

          Today’s white garment is often minimized to a simple ceremonial bib or stole, placed on the fully-clothed child or adult after pouring water. Only when the child or adult is immersed for baptism does a new, dry, ample, pure white garment fully play its role.

          Ironically, in the case of infants, our custom is to dress the baby in white before coming to church for the baptism. The garment identifies the child to be baptized, but we lose the symbolism of receiving a garment during the ritual as a sign of new life.

          The symbol returns poignantly at the end of the Christian life. At the funeral, when the casket arrives at the door of the church, it is draped in a white cloth. This cloth calls to mind the baptismal garment which identifies Christians when their journey of faith begins. Now it escorts them on their final journey. The white garment of baptism renews Easter’s promise of eternal life.