First reading: Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7 or Isaiah 55:1-11
Second reading: Acts 10:34-38 or 1 John 5:1-9
Gospel: Mark 1:7-11
The feast of the Baptism of the Lord, invites each of us, to focus, not so much on Jesus, but on ourselves as people who have been saved through the grace of Baptism. In one of the early descriptions of Baptism, it was described as ‘the door of the spiritual life.’ Christianity is not primarily about becoming a good person, or doing the right thing, or having a heart of gold. To be a Christian is to be grafted on to Christ and hence to be drawn into the very dynamics of the inner life of God.
As Christians we don’t simply speak of following Jesus or imitating him (as important as those are) rather we speak of becoming a member of his mystical body, sharing in his own relationship to the Father. Jesus is the Son of God by nature, we become, by Baptism, sons and daughters of God by adoption.
Baptism, in a word, is all about grace. It’s about the breaking forth of divine life. It’s about our incorporation through the power of God’s love into God’s own life. That through God’s grace we have been grafted onto Christ and therefore we share in the very life of God.
Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift! Gift - because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own. It’s called grace since it is given even to the guilty. The moment we begin to say to ourselves that if I do these good things, and so I will get the love of God, then we are in a bad spiritual space. Baptism is a gift, conferred on those who bring nothing of their own. It’s not a question of saying to oneself, ‘oh, I have made myself innocent therefore, I am worthy of God’s love.’ No. God makes his sun to shine on the good and bad alike. Jesus himself says it’s not you who have chosen me but I who have chosen you. God’s grace comes first.
And so baptism justifies us, it washes away our sin. All of us are born into a deeply dysfunctional world. We don’t choose this dysfunction we are born into it. We breathe it in. Baptism is the moment, sacramentally speaking, when the Holy Spirit draws us out of this fallen world into a new world, into the very life of the Trinity because we deserve it? No. Is it because of our own merit? No. It’s God’s grace. Baptism lifts us up, enlightens us, transforms us, saves us, and so by baptism we become a new creature.
The other sacraments represent modifications of that divine-life. So a living thing needs to eat. Needs nourishment! That’s the role of the Eucharist. The Sacrament of Reconciliation restores the spiritual life which has been lost through serious sin. Confirmation confirms and strengthens divine life that was given at baptism. Marriage and Holy Orders, they are the sacraments of mission and vocation. It’s not enough just to have the divine life that we get through baptism but that life needs to find a direction and purpose. As Jesus is baptised by John and we hear a voice saying, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. Baptised you have been grafted on to Christ. You become a son or daughter in Christ and therefore, every baptised person, should hear that same voice saying the same thing, you are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter in whom I am well pleased. That is the deepest truth of baptism.