Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (A), Vigil
January 11, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, as the Church celebrates the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
- At the end of decades of hidden life, Jesus’ full identity was revealed at the Jordan when the Holy Spirit descended upon him and God the Father spoke from heaven saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased!” There, Jesus received a baptism and another baptism — and more significant and efficacious one — was announced. The baptism he received from John was merely a sign of repentance “to fulfill all righteousness;” he, who came to the world to take away the sins of the world, foreshadowed in the waters of the Jordan what he would later accomplish in the baptism of blood on Calvary. But at the Jordan, right before Jesus’ baptism, John announced that there was another baptism — one not just of water, but of “the Holy Spirit and fire” (Lk 3:16) — that Jesus himself would institute. “I must be baptized by you,” the Baptist declared. This is the baptism Jesus inaugurated at the Jordan, when he by his own baptism made the waters of baptism capable of delivering on what they signified: not just representing the need for the forgiveness of sins, but actually forgiving those sins. This is the baptism that Jesus, in his valedictory address immediately before ascending into heaven, gave as his “great commission” to the disciples, whom he entrusted with the completion of his own salvific mission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:18-20).
- Countless generations before us put those words into action and eventually each one of us was brought to that saving stream of life-giving water, where Christ, through a minister, cleansed us of our sins and filled us with God’s own life. On the day of our baptism, God claimed us as his own; we were made members of Christ’s own body (1Cor 12:12ff) we entered into his death and own risen life (Rom 6:3-5); the Holy Spirit came down upon us and made us each a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1Cor 6:19); God the Father lovingly adopted us as his beloved children and inaudibly but truly said of us what he said of Christ, “This is my son, this is my daughter, my beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.”
- St. John the Evangelist stressed the joy of this baptismal reality in his first letter: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed; when it is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1John 3:1-4). The deepest thing that can be said about any of us is that we are children of God. Even though the world, as St. John writes, “does not know us,” — even though the world does not register this reality — this is who we are most profoundly. The most important day of our life — no matter how old we are, no matter how much or how little we’ve accomplished in the eyes of the world — is the day of our baptism. The Father’s words taking us as his own (“This is my son, this is my daughter”) and his telling us how much he loves us (“my beloved, in whom I am well pleased”) have no expiration date.
- The key for us, though, is not to forget who we truly are. St. Leo the Great, in his 5th-century homily for the Christmas season that comes to a close on Sunday, exhorts us to live up to the dignity we receive in baptism. The purpose of the celebration of Christ’s birth each year, above all, is to remind us of our own rebirth “of water and the Spirit” (Jn 3:5) and to help us live as “chips off the old [divine] block.” St. Leo urges us: “Christian, remember your dignity! Now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom. Through the Sacrament of Baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.”
- To remember that baptismal dignity and to live in accord with it constitute the task of the Christian life. We are called to live consciously as beloved children of God, called to live that new life in loving communion with God and others, behaving in the world in such a way that others may witness the difference baptism makes as they see “[our] good works and give glory to [our] Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16). But to remember our dignity is, to some degree, to remember our baptism presents somewhat of a problem for most of us who were baptized before we were capable of having a memory at all. That is one reason why the Church places holy water fonts at the entrance of the Church, so that as we enter the Church, the first thing we do is to recall the saving waters of baptism, the waters that made us holy sons and daughters of God. To remember our baptismal dignity is also the reason why the Church, at least every Easter — and as we’ll do today — has us renew the baptismal promises either we, or our parents and godparents for us, made on the day of our baptism.
- But if the day of our baptism is really the most important day of our life — and it is! — then we should act like it is. That begins with celebrating the anniversary of our baptism every year. Pope Francis has repeatedly asked Catholics what the day of their baptism is and to celebrate it at least as much as they celebrate a birthday and happily married couples celebrate their anniversary. If you’re a godparent, please celebrate the baptism of your godchildren. Reflect on what happens in baptism.
- When we receive the baptismal garment, we’re instructed to “see in this white garment the outward sign of [our] Christian dignity” and to “take that dignity unstained into everlasting life.” Is it still clean or do we need the Sacrament of Penance.
- We received our baptismal candle and were instructed to “walk always as a child of the light,” with “the flame of faith alive in [our] hearts.” How are we doing? Are we on fire with love for God?
- Finally, the priest said a special prayer over our ears and our lips and prayed that the Lord, “who made the deaf hear and the dumb speak,” might “touch [our] ears to receive his word and [our] mouths to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.” Are we listening to God in prayer and Scripture? Are we speaking of him to others?
- In the Opening Prayer of Sunday’s Mass, the priest will say: “Almighty ever living God, who, when Christ had been baptized in the River Jordan and as the Holy Spirit descended upon him, solemnly declared him to be your beloved Son, grant that we, your children by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, may always be well-pleasing to you!” God pronounced himself well-pleased in us on the day of our baptism and the Christian life is a life in which we seek always to please Him. May God revivify in us the graces of the most important day of our life so that every day may be a day of baptized grace until the day when, God-willing, he welcomes us home as his beloved sons and daughters.
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