But I do not think the catechesis is complete with what has been said so far. For, I think, we must also consider what follows—something many who approach the grace of baptism overlook, deceiving themselves and being born only in appearance, not in reality. For the transformation of our life that comes through regeneration would not truly be a transformation if we remained what we are. I do not know how anyone who remains the same can be thought to have become someone different when none of his distinguishing marks has changed.
For it is clear to everyone that the saving birth is received for the renewal and transformation of our nature. Yet humanity as such does not undergo change through baptism: neither its rational capacity, nor its power of thought, nor its capacity for knowledge, nor anything else that distinctively characterizes human nature is transformed. Indeed, the transformation would be for the worse if any of these natural properties were replaced.
If, then, the birth from above is a kind of reconstitution of a human being, while these things do not admit of change, we must ask what it is that must be transformed for the grace of regeneration to be complete. Clearly, the change for the better takes place when the evil marks are erased from our nature.
Therefore, if, as the prophet says, after washing in this mystical bath we become pure in our moral choices, washing away the evils of our souls, then we have become better and have been transformed for the better.
But if the washing is applied to the body while the soul does not wash away the stains of its passions, and if the life after initiation matches the uninitiated life, then—even if it is bold to say—I will say it and not shrink from it: in such cases the water is only water, and the gift of the Holy Spirit is nowhere manifested in what takes place. This is so whenever not only the ugliness of anger outrages the divine form, or the passion of greed, or an unrestrained and shameful mind, or conceit, envy, and arrogance, but also when gains from injustice remain with him and the woman he acquired through adultery continues even afterward to serve his pleasures.
If these and similar things are present in the baptized person's life in the same way both before and afterward, I cannot see what has been transformed, since I see the same person as before. The one he has wronged, the one he has falsely accused, and the one he has deprived of his own property see no change in the one who has been washed, so far as they are concerned. Nor have they heard from him the words of Zacchaeus: "If I have extorted anything from anyone, I repay fourfold."
They say the same things about him now that they said before his baptism, and they call him by the same names: greedy, covetous of what belongs to others, living in luxury from the misfortunes of others. So let the person who remains in the same condition and then keeps telling himself that baptism has changed him for the better hear Paul's words: "If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself." For what you have not become, you are not. And concerning those who have been born again, the Gospel says, "As many as received Him, to them He gave authority to become children of God."
A child born of someone is necessarily of the same kind as the one who begot it. If, then, you have received God and become a child of God, show by your moral choice the God who is in you; show within yourself the One who begot you. The one who has become a son of God ought to show his kinship with God by the very things through which we recognize God.
He opens His hand and fills every living creature with favor; He passes over transgressions; He relents concerning calamity. The Lord is good to all and does not bring wrath every day. The Lord God is upright, and there is no injustice in Him; and Scripture teaches us many similar sayings here and there. If these qualities are found in you, you have truly become a child of God. But if you persist in the marks of evil, you keep telling yourself in vain that you have been born from above. Prophecy will say to you: "You are a son of man, not a son of the Most High; you love vanity, you seek falsehood."
Do you not know how a person becomes worthy of admiration? Only by becoming holy. We should also add this remaining point: the good things promised to those who have lived well cannot be adequately described in words. For how could that be with things that "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into a human heart"? Nor, indeed, is the painful life of those who have sinned comparable to anything here that causes pain to the senses.
But even if one of the punishments there is named with words familiar here, the difference is no small one. For when you hear "fire," you have been taught to understand something different from this fire, because something is said of that fire that is not true of this one: that fire is not extinguished, while experience has found many ways to extinguish this one. And there is a great difference between what can be extinguished and what admits of no extinction. Therefore that fire is something different; it is not this fire.
Again, when someone hears "worm," the fact that the same name is used should not turn their mind toward this earthly creature; for the added statement that it is unending directs us to understand a nature different from the one we know.
Since, then, these things are set before us in the hope of the life to come, arising fittingly in each person's life from each person's moral choice according to God's righteous judgment, those who are wise should look not to the present but to what comes afterward. During this brief and passing life they should lay the groundwork for that ineffable blessedness and, through good moral choice, separate themselves from the experience of evil—both now in this life and afterward in the eternal recompense.