OUR INVITATION TO THE MYSTERY OF GOD

BAPTISM OF THE LORD

Isa 40:1-5,9-11; Ps 29:1-4,9-10; Tit 2:11-14,3:4-7; Lk 3:15-16,21-22

Our Immersion into the Mystery of God

The Church's celebration of the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ brings the Christmas season to an end. The story of the nativity and infancy changes to that of the Man, Jesus Christ, who comes to the River Jordan to be baptised by John the Baptist. During the celebration of his nativity, many people were presented to us as witnesses to his prophetic birth as the Messiah, beginning with the host of angels who summoned the shepherds to the Manger where Mary laid him. The Church celebrates the event of his baptism as a special moment of his birth in mystery, for his appearance at the River Jordan marks the commencement of his institution of the mysteries of the Church’s faith. Three great witnesses are present at this great event: John the Baptist, the greatest and the last of all the prophets, the Eternal Father whose voice we hear from above, and the Holy Spirit who descended on him as a dove. Thus, the beginning of the mysteries of our salvation was proclaimed by the greatest of the prophets and formally opened by the Blessed Trinity. The Eternal Son was present in the form of man to commence the working of the mystery of human salvation, the Eternal Father declared it open by his majestic voice heard from heaven, and the Holy Spirit descended upon the Son of Man for the work of the institution of the mysteries.

We recall that John hinted at these three divine witnesses in the passage of his letter we read yesterday with the symbols of water, blood, and the Spirit. The water symbolises the mystery of God the Father, who is the origin of all mysteries; all the mysteries of the Church emanate and serve the Father’s immutable will. In this sense, the immersion of the Son of Man in the water of River Jordan indicates his complete conformity to his Father’s will. Thus, his baptism is also an invitation to us to follow him in the immersion of ourselves into the will of the Father in dying to our wills. The symbol of blood follows from the foregoing explanation and completes it. The symbol of blood stands for the Son, who sacrifices himself eternally to the Father. In the eternity of the Trinity, sacrifice means consecration; the Son consecrates himself to the Father, who is his origin. But in time, the blood represents his humanity, which he assumed to carry out the will of the Father, as the scriptures testify of the Son saying, on coming into the world, that his body was to do the will of the Father. Thus, the blood stands for a life dedicated to the Father’s will. The witness of the voice of the Father from heaven confirms this dedication or consecration. “And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.’” The sacrificial signification of blood points directly to the Sacrament of the Eucharist by which Christ feeds us on the will of the Father embodied by his humanity.

The third symbol or witness is the Holy Spirit, seen as a dove descending on the Son of Man after his baptism. The descent of the Holy Spirit on the Son of Man completes the opening ceremony of the commencement of the mysteries of human salvation, and it is also the Church’s Sacrament of Confirmation. The Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son; he comes on the Son of Man to complete and seal the consecration of the Son of Man to the divine will and to activate the operation of the human will of the Son of Man. The human will of the Son of Man needs this bond of love to realise or work out the mysteries in human and concrete terms. “Now when all the people had been baptised and while Jesus after his own baptism was at prayer, heaven opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily shape, like a dove.” With these three witnesses and symbols, the stage is set for humanity to experience the Sacraments and the realities of the mysteries of our salvation. The water is not just the sacrament of the Father’s will; the Father is present by his revealed will—the Eternal Word Incarnate; the blood is not just the sacrament of the Son, his body, blood, soul, and divinity are present with us in the Eucharist; finally, the Holy Spirit is present in the Church and each baptised soul.

Saint Paul confirms the reality of these mysteries in his letter to Titus, informing him that our salvation is real because these realities are present in the graces we receive. “God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race and taught us that what we have to do is to give up everything that does not lead to God, and all our worldly ambitions.” We have so far summarised these mysteries in our reflections as the mystery of Jesus Christ. Our baptism is our acceptance of God’s invitation to abandon the seeking of our wills and commence our journey into the mystery of Jesus Christ, the doing of God’s will in our lives. Each of us must make this journey to be saved or to receive the salvation he has already won for us. According to Paul: “He sacrificed himself for us to set us free from all wickedness and to purify a people so that it could be his very own and would have no ambition except to do good.” Let us recall very often the ritual of our baptism and what we promised to reject and what we confessed to believe; we must meditate on the words and gestures of our Eucharistic celebration daily; we are to commune with the divine Spirit, the guest within us and draw our daily life from him and be ambitious to do the Father’s will.

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, who, when Christ had been baptised in the River Jordan and as the Holy Spirit descended upon him, solemnly declared him your beloved Son, grant that your children by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, may always be well pleasing to you. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.