What is
the most important day of your life? Maybe it was the day you were born or the
day you got married. Normally we celebrate these life changing events every
year. We all celebrate our birthday year after year even though we become less
straightforward with how old we are with each passing birthday. Married couples
celebrate their anniversary yearly, even if husbands need the occasional
reminder. We tend to celebrate the most important days in our life. Here’s a
question: do you know the date of your baptism? Today we celebrate the Baptism
of Jesus. It is a perfect opportunity to both look at the significance of this
event and remind ourselves of the importance of our own baptism.
It can
be very difficult to understand why Jesus was baptized. Try to picture this
scene for a moment. You are in the desert, beside the river Jordan. You are
surrounded on all sides by a great mass of people. One by one each person enters
the river and approaches John the Baptist who immerses them into the water.
What are these people doing? They have come to accept John’s baptism of
repentance. In being baptized they are publically acknowledging that they are
sinners. More than this, they are making the choice to change their ways and choose
a new path for the future. How can Jesus be among this crowd? How can Jesus,
who is without sin, repent? John the Baptist seems to grasp the problem and
tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized, saying, “I need to be baptized by
you and yet you are coming to me?” At
first glance it does not make any sense of Christ to be baptized by John the
Baptist.
The
Baptism of Jesus makes sense when we begin to see it in the light of the Cross
and Resurrection. Many of you will know that a few years ago, Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI wrote a wonderful book on Jesus of Nazareth. There he tackled the
question of the significance of Jesus’ baptism. He explained it this way:
Looking at the event [of Jesus’ baptism] in
light of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian people realized what
happened: Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind's guilt upon his shoulders; he
bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity
by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation
of the Cross.
Simply
put, Jesus did not get baptized for Himself but for us. At His baptism, Jesus
is embarking on His mission as the “Suffering Servant” who reconciles mankind
to God, which we read about in the first letter from the prophet Isaiah. At His
baptism, He took our sins on Himself and descended into the water, which is
symbolic of His death. Afterwards He came out of the water – a symbol of the
resurrection – He left behind our sins in the Jordan. The significance of
Jesus’ baptism comes into focus when we view it through the lens of His Cross
and Resurrection.
When
looked at this way, we better appreciate the fact that the Baptism of Jesus
completes Christmas. It is with good reason that today’s feast concludes the
Christmas season. Among the Doctors of the Church there is a famous expression
used to describe the purpose of the Incarnation that says: “God became man to
make men like God”. St. Thomas Aquinas expressed it this way:
The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make
us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might
make men gods.
The
first part of this phrase, which speaks about God assuming our human nature,
happened with the conception and later birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. The second
part of the phrase, which speaks about us becoming like God, was made possible
in large part by the Baptism of Jesus. Because Jesus was baptized, our own
baptism has force and power. As one ancient theologian wrote:
For when the Saviour is washed all water for
our baptism is made clean, purified at its source for the dispensing of
baptismal grace to the people of future ages. (St. Maximus of Turin)
Our
baptism is precisely the moment in our life when we “become like God”. At our
baptism:
- We are
grafted onto Jesus Christ
- We are
filled with grace, the very life of God
- We
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit
- We
become forever a beloved Son or Daughter of God
God
became man so that man could become like God. The baptism of Jesus is like the
completion of Christmas.
Because
our baptism is such a life-changing event, it is something that we should
remember and celebrate. We all tend to celebrate well a baptism on the actual
day of the event. Baptisms are usually accompanied by a big party and everybody
gets dressed up – particularly the person getting baptized. A few years ago I
spent some time in Tijuana, Mexico. In the chapels that I would visit, the
people always had such beautiful celebrations for baptism, even though they did
not have much money. In particular I remember vividly how one young boy was
dressed at his baptism. He was of course dressed all in white, but his clothes
were remarkable. He wore a small white tuxedo, complete with bow-tie. On the
back of his tuxedo was embroidered in gold the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
He was even wearing white shoes with a silver decal of the Holy Spirit on them.
The parents of this young boy definitely realized that something important was
happening to their son at his baptism. Though we celebrate baptism on the day
of the event, most of us probably do not remember and celebrate our own baptism
as we would our birthday or wedding anniversary. I admit that while preparing
this homily, I had to look up the day that I was baptized. Pope Francis has
encouraged us to remember our baptism day and celebrate it each year. If we
don’t, he said “we end up considering it merely as an
event that took place in the past – and not even by our will, but rather by
that of our parents.” Our baptism was one of the most important days of
our life, it is the day that we became forever a beloved son or daughter or
God. This is something we need to remember and celebrate.
Today,
as is the custom of the Popes on the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, Pope
Francis will baptize several children in the Sistine Chapel. Our own baptism,
though not in such an incredible setting, is no less important. Today, I
challenge each of us to follow the advice of Pope Francis by trying to
celebrate in some way each year the day of our baptism. If you don’t know this
day, find it out and write it in your calendar. We should never forget this
life-changing day in which we were grafted onto Jesus and forever became a
beloved son or daughter of God.
