Homily for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
Dear brothers and sisters, let us abide for a moment with Jesus at this key moment in his life. He stands in the Jordan River, the voice of God proclaims him as his Son, and the Holy Spirit descends on him from heaven. Jesus is empowered by the Spirit of God for his mission on earth, his mission to forgive people of their sins and bestow eternal life. This Spirit will be the driving force of all Jesus’ ministry until his death on the cross, and from his crucified body will be poured out on the world in the form of water. We received that Spirit at our baptism and at that moment God pronounced us to be his beloved son, animated by the same Spirit that animated Christ. This Spirit, says the Church, makes us sons of God in the Son. That means we can call God our Father just as intimately and really as Jesus could call him Father. Another way Scripture puts this is to say by baptism we are made members of the Body of Christ, with his divine/human life coursing through us.
Our whole business on earth subsequent to baptism is simply a matter of making that adoption as sons more and more real, more and more the active principle of our thoughts, words and deeds. The Spirit of Christ works in us to instill in us the very sentiments of Christ, his love, his patience, his kindness, his gentleness, his fortitude, his wisdom, his zeal. This happens provided we pray for these gifts, since God’s life will not develop in us without our consent, indeed without our daily beseeching.
Sociologists tell us that people cannot live in a society without an imaginary. By that is meant an imagined picture or image of the meaning of our lives in relation to others and to the world. The Christian’s imaginary is precisely the awareness of our life in the Trinity. By it we can go through our day in the awareness that, below or behind all the surface activities of our lives that occupy us so relentlessly and behind all the turmoil of our world, we are children of God in Christ, beloved sons of the Father, possessed by the Spirit of Christ who is also the Spirit of the Father.
And if we are members of the Son, members of his Body, then each of our neighbors is in a sense, as St John Paul II taught, a “part of us.” We are in the words of the Eucharistic Prayer, “one body, one spirit in Christ.” Our baptism is thus a call to unity, to living in peace and love with our brothers and sisters on earth. Next Sunday is the first day of the week of prayer for Christian unity. How important it is that we never lose sight of this goal for which Jesus prayed and for which he gave his life. Let us redouble our efforts to practice fraternal charity in our daily lives, first with those with whom we live, then with others whom God places in our path, and finally let us pray earnestly for that peace which is so much threatened in our present world. Only the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, renewed at every Eucharist, can accomplish that unity we so long for. Let us rely on the Spirit of unity given us at baptism, who is nothing less than the Spirit of love that unites the Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity, let us rely on his energy in us to make us ambassadors of unity.
The Father who has made us his children in the beloved Son will never desert us. The Holy Spirit poured out on the Church can truly make all men and women brothers and sisters.
We must never lose that hope and never cease to pray for that goal. Let us live by the Christian imaginary, that is, the deepest Christian reality, expressed at the climax of the Eucharistic prayer where the priest holds in his hands the Body and Blood of the Son of God, offering through him to the Almighty Father all glory and honor in the unity of the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.