On Baptism 19

Passover provides the more solemn day for baptism, since then too the Lord's passion, into which we are dipped, was accomplished. Nor will it be interpreted inappropriately as a figure that, when the Lord was about to keep the last Passover, having sent the disciples to prepare, he said, “You will meet a man carrying water”: he showed the place for celebrating the Passover by the sign of water. After that, Pentecost is a most joyful period for arranging baptisms, in which the Lord's resurrection was repeatedly made known among the disciples, the grace of the Holy Spirit was bestowed, and the hope of the Lord's coming was hinted, because then, when he had been taken back into heaven, the angels told the apostles that he would come in the same way as he had gone up into heaven, that is, at Pentecost. And when Jeremiah says, “And I will gather them from the ends of the earth on a feast day,” he means the day of Passover and of Pentecost, which is properly a feast day. For the rest, every day is the Lord's; every hour, every time is suitable for baptism: if there is a difference in solemnity, there is none in grace.