THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD “B”
JANUARY 10/11, 2009
Last August the world’s attention was focused on a building known as the “Cube” in Bejing, China. The Cube was the place where all of the aquatic contests of the Summer Olympic Games were held. And in the Cube the focus of attention was the American swimmer Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps set a world record by winning eight gold medals in addition to setting swimming time records in most of the events in which he participated. Some have gone so far as to call him the “World’s Greatest Olympic Athlete.”
Today the liturgy directs our attention to another place, the shore of the Jordan River in Galilee and to another man, Jesus from Nazareth. Today as Jesus is plunged into the waters of the Jordan at his baptism we end the Christmas cycle of feasts surrounding his birth and shift our attention to the period of his public ministry which will be crowned by his death, resurrection and ascension and his being revealed as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
As Jesus emerges from the hidden years of his life as a carpenter in Nazareth in Galilee his first public act is to acknowledge his submission to the Unseen God of the Universe. Jesus, though God and thus without sin by nature, immerses himself in the public ritual of conversion—baptism—that devotes us all to the pursuit of the God-life in this life. By doing this Jesus shows his union with us. Though God, Jesus lives out his mission not by commanding or imposing God’s justice on us or the world, but by patiently teaching everyone, by his works of healing blindness of every kind and by freeing people from whatever confines them (Is. 42:4,7). Nor does Jesus bring justice with a billy club that would break anyone who is already bruised and would quench the smoldering wick of hope. Rather, it is with the gentle persuasion of love, with its healing power, by which Jesus, the Servant—Son of God unleashes the forces of good. As he plunges into the water of the Jordan Jesus signals for the rest of us that, like for him, it will be the conscious pursuit of the will of God that will open us to the work and presence of God within us.
For Jesus his identity and mission revealed in the waters of his baptism were not a one time experience never to be revisited again. In the verses of St. Mark’s gospel which immediately follow today’s scene of Jesus’ baptism we read that the same Holy Spirit that hovered over him in the form of a dove just moments ago, immediately impelled him into the desert where over the course of forty days his vocation as God’s Servant would be severely tested. Jesus would have to chose again and again for God and commit himself to carrying out God’s will, not his own.
Today’s celebration of Jesus’ baptism reminds us that we too have been chosen by God, set apart as God’s servants, God’s anointed today in whom God is pleased. But like Jesus, God’s choice of each of us, and our acceptance of divine life and grace are not, as some forms of Christian spirituality and practice current today, would have us believe, a one time event never to have to be revisited again or even acted upon, that all that matters is that one “has accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.” In fact, the Bible and our Catholic tradition teach otherwise. While not denying the life-changing grace of our encounter with Christ in baptism, like Jesus we will over and over again be confronted with the choice of either remaining faithful to God, or giving ourselves over to the values and ways of the world. So that we would always have at our disposal the means of divine grace to help us live the life and mission given us, Jesus himself instituted and left to the church the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance, established Peter and the Apostles and their successors down through time, the Pope and Bishops, as the official teachers and guardians of the faith and Christian life he came to establish.
Endowed with extraordinary talent, Michael Phelps applied himself daily to a practice regimen that made him a champion. Endowed with divine grace Jesus invites us to a like daily regimen but one of acts of faith, hope and love in imitation of his servant ministry that will win us, not medals of bronze, silver or gold, but the championship and a glory incapable of fading, eternal life in God.