THE FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD HOMILY YEAR C

Is 42:1-4, 6f. Acts 10:34-38 (both A, B, & C) Lk 3:15f., 21f.

Wind, Fire, and Us

Beginnings; Well Begun Is Half Done;

Faithfulness to Baptism; Jesus’ Baptism and Ours.

1st Reading – Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7

Thus says the LORD:
¹ Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased, upon whom I have put my spirit; he shall bring forth justice to the nations,

² not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street.

³ a bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,

⁴ until he establishes justice on the earth; the coastlands will wait for his teaching.

⁶ I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice, I have grasped you by the hand; I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations,

⁷ to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

Or Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11

¹ Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.

² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated; indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins.

³ A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!

⁴ Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.

⁵ Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

⁹ Go up on to a high mountain, Zion, herald of glad tidings; cry out at the top of your voice, Jerusalem, herald of good news! Fear not to cry out and say to the cities of Judah: Here is your God!

¹⁰ Here comes with power the Lord GOD, who rules by a strong arm; here is his reward with him, his recompense before him.

¹¹ Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.

Responsorial Psalm – Psalms 29:1-2, 3-4, 3, 9-10.

R. (11b) The Lord will bless his people with peace.

¹ Give to the LORD, you sons of God,
give to the LORD glory and praise,
² Give to the LORD the glory due his name;
adore the LORD in holy attire.
R. The Lord will bless his people with peace.

^3AC The voice of the LORD is over the waters,
the LORD, over vast waters.
⁴ The voice of the LORD is mighty;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
R. The Lord will bless his people with peace.

^3B The God of glory thunders,
^9C and in his temple all say, “Glory!”
¹⁰ The LORD is enthroned above the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as king forever.
R. The Lord will bless his people with peace.

Or Psalms 104:1B-2, 3-4, 24-25, 27-28, 29-30

R. (1) O bless the Lord, my soul.

^1B O LORD, my God, you are great indeed!
you are clothed with majesty and glory,
² robed in light as with a cloak.
You have spread out the heavens like a tent-cloth;
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.

³ You have constructed your palace upon the waters.
You make the clouds your chariot;
you travel on the wings of the wind.
⁴ You make the winds your messengers,
and flaming fire your ministers.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.

²⁴ How manifold are your works, O LORD!
In wisdom you have wrought them all–
the earth is full of your creatures;
²⁵ the sea also, great and wide,
in which are schools without number
of living things both small and great.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.

²⁷ They look to you to give them food in due time.
²⁸ When you give it to them, they gather it;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.

²⁹ If you take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust.
³⁰ When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.

2nd Reading – ACTS 10:34-38

³⁴ Peter proceeded to speak to those gathered in the house of Cornelius, saying: “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.

³⁵ Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.

³⁶ You know the word that he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all,

³⁷ what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism
that John preached,

³⁸ how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

Or Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7

Beloved:
¹¹ The grace of God has appeared, saving all

¹² and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age,

¹³ as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ,

¹⁴ who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.

⁴ When the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared,

⁵ not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, He saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,

⁶ whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior,

⁷ so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.

Alleluia – CF. Mark 9:7

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
⁷ The heavens were opened and the voice of the Father thundered:
This is my beloved Son, listen to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Or CF. Luke 3:16

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
¹⁶ John said: One mightier than I is coming;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel – Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

¹⁵ The people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.

¹⁶ John answered them all, saying, “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

 

 

²¹ After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened

²² and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Homily

We’ve just celebrated some great Christmas feasts: the Solemnities of the Holy Family, Mary the Mother of God, and Epiphany. With today’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord and the beginning of commemorating Jesus’ adulthood, some may think we’re in a time of lesser importance. The truth is that today isn’t just a great feast, but a very great one. Here, the Holy Trinity is manifested for the first time. The Father speaks from heaven, the Son is present, and the Holy Spirit descends.

            St Luke presents the psychological setting by saying that the people were filled with expectation (v. 15). The people were wondering whether John the Baptist might be the Messiah, a misconception they pursued time and time again. To the people’s constant questions, John was always honest in his answers — here saying that one mightier than he is coming (V, 16). In the Jewish Scriptures, the word “mighty” was used often for the leader of the final struggle against evil. So John was portraying Jesus as the great liberator in the war against Satan.

We can appreciate John’s selfless other-directedness toward Jesus if we apply it to ourselves and imagine ourselves in a world without mirrors. Eliminate as well from that imaginary world reflecting pools, polished silver, bright store windows, and any other place where we might catch a glimpse of ourselves. Although this might wreak havoc with the cosmetics industry, it would encourage us to see beyond ourselves to a world that badly needs us a world of sin, of unrelieved suffering, of addictions, of strife, of diseases such as AIDS and Alzheimer’s. It would also help us to understand the selfless and other—directed nature of John the Baptist.

John said of Jesus that he would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. As for the Spirit, John was again speaking in the context of the Jewish Scriptures, which frequently attribute messianic achievement to the Spirit. Throughout the Bible many extraordinary accomplishments reveal the presence of the Spirit (the life-power) of God, from creation to the appearance of the messianic king.

John’s image of fire may seem strange at first. Reflection reveals a deeper meaning. In the Jewish Scriptures, great appearances of God often surround Him with fire. When God was making His covenant with Abraham, there appeared in the post—sunset darkness 3 smoking brazier and a flaming torch (Gen 15:17). An angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in fire flaming out of a bush (Ex 3:2). The Lord preceded the Israelites through the desert from Egypt as a column of cloud by day and a column of fire by night (Ex 13:21f.). Ezekiel described his vision of God in terms of a huge cloud with flashing fire (Ez 1:4ff.).

Fire had a prominent place also in liturgical services, where people met their saviour. God gave Aaron and his descendants, the priests, directions on how to put burning embers on the altar and how to place the meat-offerings there (Lev 1:7 ff.). And the Lord instructed Moses that the fire was to be kept burning on the altar (Lev 6:2, 6).

Like fire and the Spirit, Jesus’ baptized followers are to be dynamic and active — “fired up” with the Holy Spirit to proclaim God’s Good News to all the world. In today’s Gospel, when all the people were baptized (v. 21), John had fulfilled the mission confided by the angel to his father Zechariah before his birth — to prepare a people fit for the Lord(Lk 1:17).

That Jesus was at prayer indicates again the importance of the event. Luke often portrays Jesus at prayer on crucial occasions — at his election of the Twelve (6: 12), during his Transfiguration, at Peter’s confession that he was the Anointed of God (9: 18); Jesus prayed that the faith of the chief of the Apostles may not fail when tempted (6:12; 9: 18-20; 22:32); he prayed before his fulfilment of the Father’s plan of love by his passion (22:41), and on his cross (23:46).

At Jesus’ baptism, the skies opened — imagery frequently implying a vision of heavenly secrets. Jesus’ baptism is a promise to be fulfilled at Pentecost, when the heavens will be open again and the Spirit will descend upon the community (Acts 2). The fact that the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a clove (v. 22) refers to many things. One is the Messianic gift to the bestowed on the Church at Pentecost. More pertinent to our beginning of the Church year, though is the picture in the first pages of the Bible of the morning of the first creation, when the breath of God (ruah elohim) flew to and fro like a bird above the primordial waters as a power of fruitfulness and life. Now, at the beginning of the New Testament, with Jesus’ baptism heralding a new creation, we see the Spirit coming upon Jesus.

The God who revealed Himself at Jesus’ baptism is one who shatters the categories within which we try to contain Him. He’s a God Who’s to be found in the wilderness of our lives and who aligns Himself with the poor. His voice here in the wilderness where John was baptizing may have been an epiphany even for Jesus. For the first time in his humanity, Jesus may have realized the unique relationship that he had with the heavenly Father.

For the other hearers, the voice of the Father brought recognition that Jesus is the beloved of God who not only bears the sins of the world, but will also take them away. Jesus is the Servant of the Lord of whom Isaiah spoke in today’s First Reading (42:1). The opening of the eyes of the blind foretold in Isaiah represents an end to suffering that’s due to humankind’s creaturely status, whereas the setting free of captives marks an end to people’s suffering at the hands of other human beings.

Judaism never considered that the role of Suffering Servant and of Messiah would be combined in one person. Yet the words of the voice from heaven at Jesus’ baptism are the same as the first words of the Suffering Servant passage in Isaiah, some of which was today’s First Reading. (Isaiah’s “chosen one” [v. 1] is the same as Luke’s “beloved Son” [v. 22].) Because the Servant is an ideal individual as well as the representative of the final community of the Lord, through his baptism Jesus is declared to be thoroughly human. Because of his total union with all human weakness, the Servant Jesus must descend into human death, so as to infuse a new life into every area of humankind’s existence.

St Peter was sufficiently impressed by the awe of this occasion that he later wrote of that unique declaration that came to Jesus out of the majestic splendour, “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (2 Pet 1:17). Peter preached that message over and over again. The last recorded time was his preaching to the Gentiles in today’s Second Reading. His message on this occasion was, first, that Jesus was the fulfilment of the words from heaven at Jesus’ baptism. Secondly, God shows no partiality (v. 34) for Jews over non-Jews. Rather, all over the world whoever acts uprightly out of her or his respect for God is acceptable to God (v. 35).

Peter preached that what had been reported about Jesus of Nazareth (v. 37), beginning with the marvels of his baptism shows that God’s revelation of His plan for the destiny of humankind culminated in Jesus. Jesus’ whole ministry and message are integral parts of God’s revelation. And the Spirit of God is with him, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power” (v. 38). By Jesus’ being “anointed”, Peter means his baptism.

Jesus’ baptism is one of the four parts of the Church’s primitive religious instructions (the other parts being his death, resurrection, and ascension). When the Gospel message was standardized around 50 A.D., Jesus’ baptism was, indeed, the first part of the message. Perhaps one reason for this was to reach the unconverted followers of John the Baptist. Another purpose was to show who Jesus is. We’re the heirs of 2,000 years of Christian reflection that led us to know that Jesus is the divine Son of God, but that was not so clear in Jesus’ time.

Our baptism is as awe-inspiring a phenomenon as was Jesus’. Through baptism, we’ve become branches of Jesus the vine (J 11 152117). Through baptism, we’ve achieved death to sin and life in God (Rom 6:1-23). Through baptism, we became members of the body of Christ — part of the People of God. Through baptism, we’re incorporated into the death and resurrection of Christ. Through baptism, we’re adopted as children of God, having the Spirit dwell within us. We must be open to the Spirit and remain faithful to our calling.