SHARING THE BAPTISM OF THE OF LORD

SUNDAY, TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Jer 38:4-6,8-10; Ps 40:2-4,18; Heb 12:1-4; Lk 12:49-53

Receiving the Baptism of Jesus Christ

The Church prays on this twentieth Sunday that God will fill our hearts with the warmth of His love, making us eager to attain the promises of good things beyond human perception that He has made to us. Saint Augustine explains that the promise of God to man is beyond human understanding because it has never been comprehended by any human mind. The reason is that no ear has heard, no eye has seen, for it is beyond human sensory perception. Again, it has not entered any human heart because human hearts will enter therein. The authority of the Lord’s teaching on the last judgment lends credence to this, for he says that the good and faithful servants would be invited to enter into the joy of the Lord. Cf. Mt 25:21. The joy of the Lord is unknown to anyone who is outside the communion of God. If, as we noted already, our daily life is an invitation to communion with God, our heavenly Father, then by listening to the invitation of wisdom and making the right choices every day, we advance in our communion with God and in the knowledge of the joy of the Lord. Saint Paul also illuminates this when he writes that only the Spirit of God knows the mind of God; the same Spirit has been given to us to know what God has prepared for those who love him. Cf. 1 Cor 2:9-10. Hence, we grow in our knowledge of the content of the promises God made to us as we progress in our communion with God.

As the Holy Spirit dwells in us, he fills us with the knowledge of God’s will by strengthening our faith to grasp the spiritual realities more firmly. The clarity of our spiritual visions strengthens our hearts' resolve to tend to God and less to earthly things. Hence, we read of the Prophet Jeremiah’s abandonment self to the will of God, for life or death. Though he was aware of the plot of his persecutors to kill him, that did not deter him from proclaiming the word of God. Even the king seemed powerless to save him from the persecutors. “The king’s leading men spoke to the king. ‘Let Jeremiah be put to death: he is unquestionably disheartening the remaining soldiers in the city, and all the people too, by talking like this.” The king knew that Jeremiah was proclaiming the word of God to the people, but his moral weakness prevented him from acting in favour of God and his prophet. “He is in your hands as you know, for the king is powerless against you.” We are weak, like the king, when we disobey the word of God and reject his invitation to communion. When we refuse to take in the word of God, which is spirit and life, we will be weak, dead to spiritual reality, and completely ignorant of the promise of God.

Entering into God’s communion through living his word gradually strengthens our resolve to endure whatever comes our way as God’s will for us. The faith the word of God gives us also enables us to pray with confidence and solicit divine help in our trials, as the Psalmist did. “I waited, I waited for the Lord, and he stooped down to me; he heard my cry. He drew me from the deadly pit, from the miry clay. He set my feet upon a rock and made my footsteps firm.” The oppositions we suffer due to our acceptance of God’s invitation to his communion are part of the preparation for the communion. To share in the heavenly banquet, we must lose our relish for earthly ones. These oppositions and conflicts constitute the difficulty of our spiritual birth and transformation. Hebrews explains the experience as a way of removing the hindrances to our movement toward God. “With so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us, we too, then, should throw off everything that hinders us, especially the sin that clings so easily, and keep running steadily in the race we have started.” Because these experiences are common to those on the way to heaven, we have a cloud of witnesses around us to encourage and inspire us.

Our focus must not be the cloud of witnesses, but Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life. We must focus on the humanity of Jesus Christ, for he is the word of God made visible for our imitation. “Let us not lose sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection: for the sake of the joy which was still in the future, he endured the cross, disregarding the shamefulness of it, and from now on has taken his place at the right of God’s throne.” Our Lord himself tells us in the Gospel that he became man to make the invitation to the divine communion very concrete and enticing for us. He came to inflame our hearts with desire for what God promises. Only this flame of love can help us to go through the baptism or transformation that is required to attain the holiest of all things. “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already! There is a baptism I must still receive, and how great is my distress till it is over!” The fire did not blaze until the Son of Man immersed himself in the paschal mystery of the Father’s will for our salvation. The paschal mystery releases the Holy Spirit, the holy flames, into the hearts of believers. As is usually the case with flames, it goes from one inflammable to another near it. Our focus on the Son of Man makes us clouds of witnesses to inspire others around us. The holy flame shows us for what we really are: faithful or unbelievers.

Let us pray: O God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire. 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.