The Baptism of the Lord 9/1/2022

Today marks the formal end of the Church’s Christmas season. Jesus' birth into earthly life has now been sufficiently celebrated. His public life comes next and his baptism begins it, even though the vestment color is still white.

George Caird in his Pelican commentary on the Gospel of Luke asked this question, “Why was Jesus baptized?” The New Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The fruit of baptism or baptismal grace is a rich reality that includes the forgiveness of original sin and personal sins, birth into the new life by which man becomes an adoptive son of the Father, a member of Christ’s Body and a temple of the Holy Spirit,” (CCC no. 1279). The New Testament of the Bible is very consistent also that Jesus has no sins of his own to confess.

Caird writes: “Jesus went to be baptized then, not for private reasons, but as a man with a public calling. John the Baptist had summoned all Israel to repentance and with Israel, Jesus too, must go. Jesus dwelt in the midst of a sinful people and could not separate himself from them. Rather, he must be fully identified with them in their movement towards God.”

In other words, baptism was not necessary for Jesus Christ. He was always God’s beloved Son on whom His favor rests. And yet He chose to be baptized to identify Himself with our need for forgiveness and with our longing for redemption. To lead us into the kingdom, He himself would enter by the same and only door open to us, the door of baptism and which is also the door to other sacraments. It is not only a special irony. It is a central image of the redemptive mystery. Jesus enters into radical solidarity with all men and women, taking upon himself even the condition of our sinfulness, himself having not sinned. The “one mightier” assumes the position of weakness. It is precisely in this that he is beloved. And it is from this baptism sign that he is sent.
 

He was like us in all things but sin, the author of Hebrews reminds us when discussing Jesus’ high priesthood. And yet we balk at the statement. “If he did not sin, how could he really be like us? How could he be fully human? We misunderstand this because we misunderstand our humanity as well as our sin. Christ has come not only to reveal divinity to us; he has come to reveal us to ourselves. Not only is he truly God. He is truly human. And he is truly human precisely because he does not sin. All of our sin is nothing other than the rejection of the truth of our humanity. Jesus’ utter acceptance of our humanity, his drinking of our cup fully, his sharing of our wounded condition, reverses our sinful rejection of our creatureliness.

His baptism, then, is at the heart of his mission to heal us. He enters even the wounds of our self-rejection, without having made the rejection himself. He accepts full solidarity with us even if it means being seen as sinner. Jesus’ baptism is one of his earliest great transformations of our human condition. The first was that the Word itself could take human flesh. All the further implications would follow: that he would be tempted to reject this mission of transformation; that he would undertake all manner of healing and disarming of devils; that he would announce a kingdom to transmute all blindness, poverty, imprisonment, and darkness; that he would, at last, suffer the very fate of sin in death. In freeing us from sin he communicates God’s grace in the sacraments he established. Sacraments are like signposts and inns of healing and solace on our pilgrim journey to our destination.

Just as we now baptize our children to announce a new fate for the human body, the baptism of Jesus is the inauguration of that fate. Announced as sinner, wholly one with our condition, Jesus, hovered over by the very spirit of God, is gazed upon by the Father who sent him and who now says to him and all of us who share his flesh—“This is my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” Can we repeat this ‘mantra’ to ourselves, our children and family to remind us to walk the higher path, the path of holiness – path of the beloved!

Blessings,

Fr Tom KUNNEL, C.O