From "THE TRUE BELIEVER" by Aidan Kavanagh, O.S.B. (full article can be found in Type list in right sidebar under
"Excerpts/Current Books and Articles I am Reading"
"Yet even this is not enough, nor is it where the scandal lies. For to know him baptismally is to know him as we were first known when creation was new.
Baptismal iconography has always imaged Baptism as cosmic rebirth, Eden restored. Early baptisteries, decorated to resemble paradise, were filled with fertility, wines, sunlight, water, and a humid atmosphere.
They were gloriously womb-like, for from them issued a new People whose purpose in life was to beget others by the Church, Christ’s bride, in his power.
Thus the ancient inscription in the baptistery of the Pope’s cathedral in Rome read:
Here is born in Spirit-soaked fertility
a brood destined for another City,
begotten by God’s blowing
and borne upon this torrent by the Church their virgin mother.
Reborn in these depths they reach for heaven’s realm,
the born-but-once known by felicity.
This spring is life that floods the world,
the wounds of Christ its awesome source.
Sinner sinks beneath this sacred surf
that swallows age and spits up youth.
Sinner here scour sin away down to innocence,
for they know no enmity who are by
one font, one Spirit, one faith made one.
Sinner shudder not at sin’s kind and number,
for those born here are holy."
(Lateran baptistry inscription (fifth century))