May Jesus Christ be praised and may his holy Mother pray for
us.
Today we celebrate the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, and
with it, the end of the Christmas season.
On the feast of Christmas, we received the gift of the baby Jesus in the
manger at Bethlehem, the Word of the Father now in flesh appearing. On the following Sunday we celebrated the
feast of the Holy Family, and we received the loving and protective care of
Saint Joseph and the Blessed Mother.
Last Sunday we celebrated the feast of the Epiphany and with the Magi
from the East, we presented the Child Jesus with the gold of our thanksgivings,
the frankincense of our prayers and the myrrh of our sorrows and
sufferings. Today, with the feast of his
baptism, the Lord Jesus offers to us a final Christmas gift.
You are my beloved Son; with you I am
well pleased. Only three times do we hear the voice of the
Father in the Gospels. Twice the message
is the same. You are my beloved Son. These sacred words addressed to the Lord
Jesus are the same words that God the Father addresses to each of us through
the waters of Baptism. The last gift of
Christmas that the Lord Jesus gives to us is a share in his own relationship
with the Father. In Baptism, we are
united to him, and are claimed as the Beloved of the Father.
In the Baptism of Jesus we learn about both his identity and
his mission. We learn who he is and what
he has come to accomplish. Seeking
baptism from John, whom the Lord Jesus called the greatest man born of woman,
the Lord signaled that the age of the prophets had come to an end. He had come among us to give comfort to his
people, and like the Good Shepherd he had come to feed his flock and gather the
lambs and lead them with care. He had
come to give himself up for us, to deliver us from all lawlessness, to cleanse
us and make us his own people. And he
had come to share with us his own identity as the Beloved of the Father. He mission to us was to share his own
relationship with us. Created from the
love of God, we are now called to communion with God. We are united both to Jesus’ identity as the
Beloved and to his mission through the waters of our Baptism.
In baptism, we receive the seed of our vocation, that
particular way that the Father has given to each of us through His Son and in
the power of the Holy Spirit to be drawn closer to himself. No matter our vocation, priest, religious,
married, single, in all of our vocations we are called to holiness. In all of our vocations we are called to
participate in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Each of us received a mark on our soul at
Baptism giving us a place in the Church’s worship. The Church invites us, as the Second Vatican
Council teaches, to actively participate in the Sacred Liturgy. Active participation is first of all, a
disposition of the soul, it’s an internal matter. Just as love is at work in the heart, long
before it is at work in action or speech.
We are called to come to the celebration of the Mass prepared in our
souls and then in our speech. The love
of God poured into hearts at baptism pours forth from our lips in praise of the
Father’s glory.
We are claimed and named, dear brothers and sisters, as
beloved children of the Most High God in the waters of Baptism. Marked with the cross of Christ, washed in
the blood of the Lamb, and anointed with the oil of gladness, as the beloved
children of the Father, our mission is to reflect the Father’s love and reveal
the face of Christ.
As we enter into the mystery of the Lord’s love in this
Eucharist, let us again receive the gift that the Lord Jesus offers to us and
our identity as the beloved of God. Let
us lift up our hearts and our voices with the Church on earth and the hosts of
heaven. And in the silence of our hearts
after with receive the Lord in Holy Communion, let us listen for the voice of
the Father as he calls to us, his beloved children. Amen.
Preached at Santa Clara Catholic Church,
Oxnard, CA
