The Baptism of the Lord (Year C)
Isa 40.1-5, 9-11; Ps 103; Titus 2.11-14, 3.4-7; Lk 3.15-16, 21-22
1. In the second part of the Christmas season, since New Year’s Day, the gospel readings have moved on from the Christmas story itself to the early days of the Lord’s ministry – for instance, the calling of the disciples, the miracles he worked among the people and the testimonies of John the Witness. Today’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord also belongs with our Lord’s adult life in terms of time, but there has been a long spiritual tradition that theologically the Baptism belongs with the Incarnation. So the Baptism is a hinge between the infancy and hidden life of Christ and His appearance on the public stage.
2. Writing to Titus, Saint Paul says that “God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race.” The pouring out of grace was made possible by the Incarnation. When the Word became flesh, divine power and blessing entered the world in tangible and visible form. The Eternal Word was present in the one person of Jesus Christ, in Whom human and divine natures were perfectly united (hypostatic union). In the defenceless and speechless infant, the glory of divine revelation did not depend on human speech or virtue. But now, as Our Lord begins His public ministry, His mature human nature is vital, because the nature of His words and actions as man will reveal God.
3. Between infancy and maturity, the Lord entered His ‘hidden life’. We catch only a few glimpses of Him in these years, and those that we do catch relate to His religious activities as He joined His family in making pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem. The two joyful mysteries of the Rosary that touch on this are the Presentation of the Lord, and the Finding of the Lord in the Temple, among the doctors of the Law. That is all that is revealed to us in the gospels.There was an attempt to fill the gap. Numerous collections of stories arose about the young Jesus. They can be found in a collection called ‘the apocryphal gospels’. In these stories Jesus utters words of sublime wisdom from His cradle, performs miracles as a small boy, and even does what looks like magic. The Church rejected these writings and would not allow them into the Canon of Scripture, that is the material in the Bible we use today.
4. Theologians felt that it was entirely proper that a veil be drawn over the childhood of Our Lord, since His announcement of the Kingdom plainly began, at His own choice, with His baptism by John. In moving straight from Christmas to the public ministry, they felt, we were doing the Lord’s will. The Christmas cycle of readings tell us Who Jesus is – the Word made flesh. When He begins His public ministry, we hear that Word of God speak.
5. Our Lord instructs a reluctant John the Baptist to baptise Him. In this way, Old Testament hopes are united with the new and distinctive initiative of God. The Word made flesh in the infant is now a man; the words of Christ will be the Word of God speaking in human language. So, at the Baptism, the Holy Spirit’s manifestation in the form of the dove confirms that what Jesus will say and do in human terms is definitive as God’s revelation, that it simply is the divine truth. The Baptism is designed to eradicate any doubt about the authority with which Our Lord speaks. When Jesus appears, in Isaiah’s words, “here is the Lord, coming with power.”
6. Tomorrow we enter Ordinary Time and begin our journey through the teachings of Jesus contained in the gospels. Today’s feast reminds us that whenever Jesus speaks, He is still the Word made flesh, God revealing himself to us, identifying himself with us. The Christmas message is not a seasonal romance, as the world seems to think, but a theological truth that underlies all that God was doing in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.
Osho
