A reading from the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans (6:3-11)
Do you not realise that we who were baptised into Christ Jesus, were baptised into his death? So by baptism into his death we were buried with him, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too should live in newness of life. If we have become united to him by dying a death like his, so we shall be united by a resurrection like his, in the knowledge that our former self was crucified with him so that the self of sin should be set aside, so that we should no longer be enslaved to sin. For someone who has died has been justified from sin.
But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall live with him too, knowing that Christ once raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin, once and for all, and the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, you must reckon yourselves dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.
Paul is clear that sin and death came into the world through human fault, but that Jesus Christ brings justification and life (Rom 5:18). Access to these gifts is by baptism ‘into Christ Jesus’. For Paul this is baptism into his death so as to rise to new life. The ‘old humanity’ is crucified and is no longer enslaved to sin. We are ‘justified from sin’, for, having died with him, we live with him too. Death no longer has ‘dominion’ (kyrieuein). Jesus died ‘once and for all’ (ephapax) and now he lives ‘to God’. Baptism enables us to do likewise.
Psalm 118
‘Give thanks to the Lord for he is good.’ The great hallel psalm dominates the arrival of Easter, being used also at the Easter morning Mass, on the octave day, and during the octave. ‘I shall not die, I shall live.’ ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the corner stone.’