Before the beginning of the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, i.e. the incorporation of the new member of the Church into it, the Sequence of Catechesis with the reading of the exorcisms, the expulsion of Satan from the baptized and the acceptance-confession of our Lord Jesus Christ as the One and Only God, precedes. Already from ancient Christian times, as we see in the writings of the holy Fathers, the catechumen had to leave his old delusion, to deny the devil consciously, in order to walk towards Holy Baptism in the Spirit and in Truth. In our Orthodox homeland, in this blessed land that has breathed Orthodoxy since Apostolic times, we may not understand the importance of the first and essential part of the part that precedes Baptism, the Sequence of the Catechesis.
Personally, I had to come to the African equator, to a place that is not purely Christian, to see things “in practice”. In places that have either never heard of Christ, or if they have, they have heard, heard, seen and lived falsely in the light of heresy and schism . So now that the bells are ringing in an Orthodox way, they are energetically ringing the blessed seed of the Gospel in this land, announcing the way that leads to Unity, the way that leads to the Truth of the One, Holy and Undivided Trinity.
Those who are outside the Church belong to themselves. Those who are consciously integrated into Her belong to Christ. He is possessed, say the Fathers, who despairs. He who denies Christ and is not in communion with Him and His Holy Church, but only with himself. Here in Africa, whoever collaborates with Satan through the similar mystical rites always moves in his ego, always has an interest, always seeks something for himself. Whether this means wealth, position or social recognition; or even envy, jealousy or hatred for the other person, his life or his progress. It is not by chance that the recognition enjoyed by magicians in these societies, recognition which is intrinsically rooted in fear of the “powerful spirit”, which only harms, as well as of those who have the possibility of invoking and communicating effectively with it!
Our brethren who come to Holy Baptism are not unaware of all that I have mentioned. They know all too well what it means to be insulated, what it means to need supremacy, what it means to step on each other, what it means to cooperate with the devil. Because some, if not most, have come into contact with such processes without finding joy, hope and peace in their lives, as they themselves confess. Thus, the dismissal of Satan before Baptism becomes a decisive act in the life of the indoctrinated African, which will be sealed by the grace of the Holy and Tempting Spirit at Baptism. As ministers of Baptism in Africa, each of us has to remember how the demons are horrified before the sign of the Cross! We all have experiences of our newly converted brethren who before the consecrated water of Baptism changed their behavior and turned into wild beasts, but calming down in the same consecrated water that before made the demons tremble.
I had this experience some time ago, when the young and smiling woman, who had been smiling until the Catechism service, began to feel unhappy. And this discomfort turned into body twitching, shrieks and falling to the ground before the consecrated water before the final immersion. Invoking in the depths of my soul the mercy and power of the Most Holy God, I insisted on the entry of the poor girl into the holy baptismal font. “The handmaid of God is baptized… in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And it was then that I saw the convulsions disappear and the peace return! When at the end of the Holy Sacrament I asked the noble and learned woman to testify before everyone what she had experienced a few minutes before, she candidly confessed that she felt herself disappearing in a total darkness before entering the holy water, and on coming into contact with it she felt “liberated from invisible bonds”, as she said verbatim. Satan rests where Christ is forgotten, where Love is left. The societies missionarily discerned by the humble scavengers of the Gospel of Christ have known thousands of human victims over the centuries, such as victims of witchcraft, superstition, slavery, ignorance, ignorance, war, western civilization… In every case these victims suffered from those forces that are opposed to everything that is God-driven, everything that is blessed, creative, spiritually progressive. And it is a miracle of the Triune God that the sowing of the Word in a land arid of love throughout the ages, love true, springing from the empty Monument of the Risen Jesus. Raising our eyes to the Crucified Jesus, to Him who stretched out His immaculate hands on the wood of Life and united the corruptions of this world, I ask that the brethren of our ecclesiastical province be united in the common praise of the Church “in one mouth and one heart”, that united in one faith and true love with all the Orthodox throughout the world, they may magnify His Holy Name and live in the unquenchable light of grace.
† Brazzaville & Gabon Panteleimon
