Baptism of Our Lord

2009 FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD

Today's celebration of the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, brings the Christmas season to a close in our liturgical calendar. Jesus, the Son of the living God, Who assumed our human nature by being born of the virgin Mary, was baptized by John in the river Jordan.

Scripture scholars generally believe that John the Baptist was a member of a very strict religious group of his day, who were known as the Essenes. They lived a communal life in a mostly desert area, near the Dead Sea. We know a great deal about this group from the Dead Sea scrolls which were discovered in recent years at Qumran. From the Bible we learn that, as a young man, John had gone out to live in the desert as a hermit, to pray and to fast, and to draw closer to God. John was obviously preparing himself for what he saw as his mission from God, namely, to be the one to prepare the way for the Lord’s Anointed, to make the Messiah known when He would appear among His people. Although living out in the desert, many people came to hear John speak. They saw him as being a holy man, a prophet of God, someone like Isaiah or Jeremiah or any of the other great prophets of Old Testament times. John baptized those persons who came to him and who were ready to repent of sin in their lives. John immersed them in the waters of the Jordan river in a symbolic action when they indicated to him that they wanted to be cleansed of sin, renewed spiritually, and begin a new life of friendship with God.

John spoke to the crowds about Jesus. He pointed Him out and called Him the Lamb of God, Who had come to take away the sins of the world, the One Whose sandal straps John said he was not worthy to untie. He said that Jesus would baptize people "with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. By both these images of Spirit and fire people would understand that John was referring to the presence of God Himself. In other words, John was saying that when Jesus would baptize, it would not be just a symbolic gesture, but rather Jesus would bring the newly baptized person into union with God, into the presence and activity of God Himself.

John certainly must have wondered why Jesus approached him to be baptized, and in the Gospel today, we heard John say to Jesus, "I need to be baptized by You and do you come to me.?" To understand why Jesus asked for baptism from John we need to understand Jesus’ mission from His Father. Jesus was sent into the world to bring salvation for all people. Jesus came to redeem us from the power of Satan and of sin, and so right from the beginning of His public ministry Jesus wanted to show people that He identified with them, that He was clearly on the side of sinners, ready to welcome them, to forgive them and to heal them. Although He was personally without sin, Jesus wanted to show us just how much He desired to be identified with sinful humanity, just how much He wanted to be in solidarity with sinners. By being baptized by John Jesus showed Himself to be on the side of the ordinary people of His day, with the poor, with the powerless, even with the outcasts of society. Jesus invited all people to come and learn from Him, to be personally taught by Him about their relationship with God. Jesus wanted to reveal to those who were open to hear His message that God loved each person as a loving Father loves His own son or daughter. He wanted to teach them that God had sent Him to redeem sinners. He wanted to teach them that, in fact, He was the suffering Servant of God, spoken of by the prophet Isaiah. He wanted to teach people He had not come mainly to condemn, but to forgive all those who were ready to repent and start again. He wanted to teach them the He had come not to destroy, but to build up, and to rekindle the fire of love in people's hearts, to heal those who were sick and in danger of spiritual death, as the prophet Isaiah indicated in our first reading today. By choosing to associate with sinners and to receive baptism at the hands of a sinner, Jesus, from the very beginning of His public ministry, gives us a foreshadowing of the Cross on which He would one day die. It would be by His total obedience to doing His Father’s will, it would be by accepting to die on the Cross for our sins, that Jesus would win for us a full pardon and eternal life with God.

Because He humbled Himself and died for us He was exalted, He was raised from the dead, and He ascended into heaven to reign at the right hand of His Father. In today’s scene of the baptism of Jesus we can see a foreshadowing of this exaltation in heaven, for while being baptized by John, the voice of God is heard saying to Jesus: “You are My Son, the Beloved, with You I am well pleased."

What good news for us that Jesus is a friend of sinners, and that He wants to heal our wounds. What good news that there is hope for us founded on our trust in Jesus. Even if we may have broken our friendship with God through serious sin, Jesus will forgive us totally when we repent and say we are sorry. We are loved deeply by God, even when we cannot love ourselves, and through Jesus we are called to come to Him and be forgiven.

On this Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, we thank God for His great love and infinite mercy towards us, and we should open our hearts to Jesus and accept His invitation to share our lives with Him and to be His faithful followers, His life-long friends. As the traditional hymn says: “What a friend we have in Jesus.”