BAPTISMOF THE LORD [C] (Is 40:1-5, 9-11; Ti 2:11-14, 3:4-7; Lk 3:15-16, 21-22)

The child Jesus whom the magi proclaimed last week as the prince of Jews, has grown to manhood and respectability, and reaches that place in life when He must embark on the Divine commission entrusted to Him by the Father.  The baptism of Jesus is the occasion of the first public revelation of all the Three Persons in the Holy Trinity, and the official revelation of Jesus as the Son of God to the world by God the Father.  The liturgical season of Christmas comes to a conclusion this Sunday with the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord. 

Why did Jesus get baptized? What this means has prompted much debate. It may be that Jesus was “fulfilling” all the scriptural prophecies about him which focused on “righteousness.” It may be that he was seen as validating the rite of baptism for all future generations of Christians. 

Many Fathers of the Church explain that Jesus received John’s baptism to identify himself with his people, who, as a result of John's preaching, for the first time in Jewish history became aware of their sins and of their need for repentance. For those onlookers who had been wondering if John the Baptist were the Messiah, all doubt is removed, with the heaven’s voice, declaring Jesus as the Chosen of God.

According to the Navarre Bible commentary, in Christ's baptism we can find a reflection of the way the Sacrament of Baptism affects a person. Christ's baptism was the exemplar of our own. In it the mystery of the Blessed Trinity was revealed, and the faithful, on receiving Baptism, are consecrated by the invocation of and by the power of the Blessed Trinity. Similarly, Heaven’s opening signifies that the power, the effectiveness, of this Sacrament comes from above, from God, and that the baptized have the road to Heaven opened up for them, a road which Original Sin had closed. Jesus' prayer after his baptism teaches us that "after Baptism man needs to pray continually in order to enter Heaven; for though sins are remitted through Baptism, there still remains the inclination to sin which assails us from within, and also the flesh and the devil which assails us from without.”

As we begin Ordinary Time today, we are called to reflect on our own baptism.  Like Jesus, all that we undertake must flow from who we are—God’s beloved. We are called to follow in the footsteps of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  This means that we, too, must humbly submit ourselves to God's wise and loving plan for our lives. He, in turn, anoints us with the Holy Spirit that we may be clothed with His power and grace. 

On the day of our Baptism, as Pope St. John Paul II explains, "We were anointed with the Oil of Catechumens, the sign of Christ's gentle strength, to fight against evil.  Blessed water was poured over us, an effective sign of interior purification through the gift of the Holy Spirit. We were then anointed with Chrism to show that we were thus consecrated in the image of Jesus, the Father's Anointed One. The candle lighted from the Paschal Candle was a symbol of the light of Faith which our parents and godparents must have continually safeguarded and nourished with the life-giving grace of the Spirit 

 Baptism makes us a new creation, renewing or improving upon our natural life with supernatural life. We are recreated in a new mould that is Jesus Christ.

A little girl was sitting on her grandfather’s lap as he read her a bedtime story. From time to time, she would take her eyes off the book and reach up to touch his wrinkled cheek. She was alternately stroking her own cheek, then his again. Finally she spoke up, "Grandpa, did God make you?"

 "Yes, Sweetheart," he answered, "God made me a long time ago."

"Oh," she paused, "Grandpa, did God make me too?"

"Yes, indeed, honey," he said, "God made you just a little while ago."

Feeling their respective faces again, she observed, "God’s getting better at it, isn’t he?"

 She is right. God renewed the old creation by giving new life to everything in Christ his Son.

Baptism also gives us new orientation. An ancient Chinese proverb advises: “If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.” In baptism we are helped to reorient ourselves to God, as before baptism we are by default oriented to sin and away from God.

 In baptism we get our identity exchanged with that of Christ. French writer Henri Barbusse (1874-1935) tells of a conversation overheard in a trench full of wounded men during the First World War. One of the men, who knew he only had minutes to live says to one of the other men, "Listen, Dominic, you've led a very bad life. Everywhere you are wanted by the police. But there are no convictions against me. My name is clear, so, here, take my wallet, take my papers, my identity, take my good name, my life and quickly, hand me your papers that I may carry all your crimes away with me in death."

 The Good News is that through Jesus, God makes a similar offer. When we are baptized, we identify ourselves with Jesus. We publicly declare our intention to strive to be like Jesus and follow God's will for our lives. When we are baptized, our lives are changed. We see things differently than before. We see other people differently than before. We are able to identify with Jesus because He was baptized. Such identification is life changing.

The feast of the Baptism of our Lord serves to remind us of our own Baptisms, compelling us to renew the promises our parents and godparents made on our behalf, when they presented us to the Church, to make of us disciples of Jesus. Most of us dipped the fingers of our right hand into the holy water font and blessed ourselves when we came into Church today.   This blessing is supposed to remind us of our Baptism. And so when I bless myself with Holy Water, I should be thinking of the fact that I am a child of God; that I have been redeemed by the Cross of Christ; that I have been made a member of God’s family and that I have been washed, forgiven, cleansed and purified by the Blood of the Lamb. As this feast help us to remind us of our baptism, may it help us to live the commitments we or our godparents made for us before the Church and God.