Lest You Remain

and of exercising the apostolate. And yet it is necessary to seek the roots of that conscious and free consecration and of the subsequent giving of self to God as His possession in Baptism, the sacrament that leads us to the Paschal Mystery as the apex and center of the Redemption accomplished by Christ. Therefore, in order to highlight fully the reality of religious profession, we must turn to the vibrant words of St. Paul in the letter to the Romans: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ...we too might walk in newness of life” (26); “Our old self was crucified with him so that...we might no longer be enslaved to sin “(27); “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (28) Upon the sacramental basis of Baptism in which it is rooted, religious profes- sion is a new “burial in the death of Christ”: new, because it is made with aware- ness and by choice; new, because of love and vocation; new, by reason of unceas- ing “conversion.” This “burial in death” causes the person “buried together with Christ” to “walk like Christ in newness of life.” In Christ crucified is to be found the ultimate foundation both of baptismal consecration and of the profession of the evangelical counsels, which—in the words of the Second Vatican Council—“con- stitutes a special consecration.” It is at one and the same time both death and liber- ation. St. Paul writes: “Consider yourselves dead to sin.” At the same time he calls this death “freedom from the slavery of sin.” Above all, though, religious consecra- tion, through its sacramental foundation in holy Baptism, constitutes a new life “for God in Jesus Christ.” In this way, simultaneously with the profession of the evangelical counsels, in a much more mature and conscious manner, “the old nature is put off ” and likewise “the new nature is put on, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness,” to use once more the words of the letter to the Ephesians.(29) From Founder’s Writings ( Oblatio ) Act of Oblation Kazimierz near Cracow, December 11, 1670 “In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ Crucified. Amen. I, Stanislaus of Jesus Mary Papczy<ski , in the flesh, son of Thomas of Podegrodzie, of the diocese of Cracow, being 40 years of age, offer and consecrate to God the Father Almighty, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in like manner to the Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, my heart, my soul, Program of Vigils 33