Baptism Allows Us to Identify With ChristRead Time 9 min

The Baptism of the Lord

Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11

Titus 2:11-14, 3:4-7

Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

Since September, I have been mentoring a third grade girl preparing for her Baptism at the Easter Vigil. Her name is Gabby, and she is a breath of fresh air, always lilting and happy to learn about her faith. When I first was approached for this task, I pondered what I wanted Gabby to take with her. It may sound a bit overreaching, but I wanted her to know salvation history. I wanted her to grasp the fullness of God’s love written in the Sacred Scriptures from the very beginning in Genesis through the patriarchs, matriarchs and the prophets: the seminal stories that form our anticipation for the coming of the Savior.

So, I bought her a book, “Catholic Bible Chronicles, 70 Bible Stories from Adam to the Apostles.”

We began with Adam and Eve treading carefully through Genesis. The names read like a holy litany: Abraham and Sarah, people of insurmountable faith; Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes of the Israel; Joseph, the victim of intense fraternal jealousy; and Moses, who struggled to form the Hebrew people in the heat of the desert, giving us the law. Sinners, yes. Yet chosen to be part of the mosaic of salvation.

But really, she is only 9 years old. Do I expect her to make the connection between salvation history and her Baptism? Not fully. But these are seeds being planted, and as you and I ponder with the Church the Baptism of the Lord, perhaps it is a good thing to think about how this moment fulfilled all the hopes and dreams of the patriarchs and prophets who looked for the coming of Messiah.

That is what the Baptism of the Lord is all about. It is not just one event in the life of Jesus Christ that launched his public ministry. It is not just a mysterious moment when Jesus came to know fully who he was: God’s beloved Son. No, it is the moment when Jesus stepped into the murky waters of the Jordan with the sinners, shoulder to shoulder, in solidarity with them. It is the moment Jesus became the way through history, fulfilling all the Old Testament foretold about him.

Jesus’ Baptism creates a highway for God. This is the place where all the people of God who have wandered off into the exile of sin are led back to God. For through the saving history of our faith, the road has been paved, the mountains and hills have been made low, and the rugged land has been made a plain, so that we recognize the Son of God who proclaims: “I am the way.”

Why is our Baptism so important? Why is it necessary for all of us to see ourselves as sons and daughters of God, brought into life in Christ long ago? It is because Baptism is that propelling sacrament that helps us identify ourselves as one with Christ. We rise along with Christ, from the waters of our Baptism, belonging now to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yet, it cannot end there.

Like Gabby, we will grow in our faith. We will grow in holiness, the vocation of all the baptized. “Strengthened by so many and such great means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord — each in his or her own way — to that perfect holiness by which the Father himself is perfect.” (Lumen Gentium #11) As a holy people, we also share in Christ’s prophetic office: it “spreads abroad a living witness to him, especially by a life of faith and love and by offering to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips confessing his name.” (Hebrews 13:15)

In 1998, the late Fr. Melvin Michalski, professor of systematic theology at Saint Francis de Sales Seminary, and I were invited to Ossining, New York, to spend a week with the Maryknoll missionaries who had returned to their motherhouse for summer spiritual refreshment. It was a time in the Church when the laity were coming into an understanding of their call to live Jesus by virtue of Baptism.

We spent the week presenting the ways that the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of the laity work together in parish mission. It was a hot July summer. I remember the rooms had no air conditioning. But I also remember the incredible faith of the men and women returning from lands I would never see. What marked them was their happiness. What set them apart was their love for Jesus Christ and the life commitment they had made to their service in the Church.

Fr. Melvin and I poured over the Vatican documents carefully laying out the wonder of the laity and the clergy working together. “The laity go forth as powerful heralds of a faith in things to be hoped for (Hebrews 11:1) provided they steadfastly join to their profession of faith a life springing from faith.” They announce Christ by a living testimony as well as by the spoken word, taking on a specific force because they carry out the word and work of God in the ordinary surroundings of the world. (Lumen Gentium #34) Ordained priesthood cooperates with the grace of God to mediate through word and sacrament the life of Christ to the Church. It was all so incredibly hopeful.

You and I are born from our salvation history into a Church where Baptism calls us into divine cooperation with the work of Christ Jesus. At the Easter Vigil when Gabby is baptized into the life of Christ, and her long red hair is soaked in the faith of our fathers and mothers, we will rejoice in one small soul called to walk with us on the highway of our God.