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The following text guided today’s homily:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n- Today\u2019s celebration of the baptism of the Lord Jesus culminates the celebration of the Christmas season. It symbolically finishes Jesus\u2019 three decades of hidden life as God the Father announces at the Jordan what was concealed from the beginning from almost everyone except from Mary and Joseph, a few shepherds, the wise men, Simeon and Anna and a handful of others: that Jesus is God\u2019s own beloved Son in whom he is well pleased.<\/li>\n
- The celebration of Jesus\u2019 baptism culminates the Christmas season in another way as well, because it points to our baptism, which is the means by which we enter into the saving work Jesus was born into our world to effectuate. We\u2019ve been singing in Hark! The Herald Angels Sing<\/em> since Christmas day, \u201cMild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.\u201d Christ through his incarnation has made it possible for us through baptism to enter into the mystery and meaning of Christmas and the second birth, immortality, and resurrection that that baptism promises in this world and forever. Jesus entered the waters of the Jordan precisely in order to bless those waters so that they could bring about this second birth, so that what John\u2019s baptism pointed to could actually be accomplished: John\u2019s baptism indicated our and others\u2019 need for spiritual cleansing, for the forgiveness of sin, for the triumph over the death to which sins lead us, but John\u2019s baptism couldn\u2019t actually take those sins away. This is the truth to which John the Baptist pointed in today\u2019s Gospel when he contrasted his baptism with the one Jesus and the Church Jesus founded would carry out: \u201cI am baptizing you with water,\u201d John said, \u201cbut one mightier than I is coming. \u2026 He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.\u201d When Jesus entered the water to be baptized, he sanctified the water so that the sign of washing could actually bring about the interior purification it signified.<\/li>\n
- But the baptism Jesus would inaugurate would do far more than that. It would enable the sons of earth to enter into the very life of God. When Jesus was baptized, three things happened, as we see in today\u2019s Gospel. First, heaven was opened. Second, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus. Third, a voice came from heaven saying, \u201cYou are my beloved Son; with whom I am well pleased.\u201d The event of Jesus\u2019 baptism gave us a glimpse into heaven, into the very life of God. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit manifested in this world their relationship with God the Son that has existed in heaven since the beginning. God the Father pronounced Jesus his much loved and all pleasing Son. Great Trinitarian theologians and saints, like St. Augustine, have explained the Trinity as love. God the Father is the eternal lover, God the Son as the eternal beloved, and the Holy Spirit as the eternal love between the Father and the Son so strong as to take on personality. When God the Father spoke at the Jordan pronouncing Jesus his beloved Son in whom he is well-pleased, he was merely making explicit what has always been and will always be within the Blessed Trinity. Similarly, when the Holy Spirit came down from the heavenly Father upon the Son whose assumed humanity was wet in the Jordan, it was just a manifestation of the love between Father and Son whom the Holy Spirit has been since before the foundation of the world. Therefore, at the Baptism of Jesus, we are able to eavesdrop on the conversation that takes place between the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. St. John refers to God in his prologue as the Logos, <\/em>\u201cIn the beginning was the Logos<\/em> and the Logos<\/em> was before God and the Logos<\/em> was God.\u201d We normally translate Logos <\/em>as \u201cWord,\u201d but as the future Pope Benedict XVI wrote in a 1980s work called Feast of Faith, logos<\/em> can also be translated as \u201cconversation,\u201d as an interpersonal tri-alogue between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We hear, and see, an echo of that eternal three-person dialogue at Jesus\u2019 baptism.<\/li>\n
- What happens in our Baptism is that we are able \u2014 incredibly \u2014 to enter that conversation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All three things that happened in the baptism of Jesus occur in our Baptism. First, heaven is opened; we\u2019re not just purified of sin but made heirs of heaven and eternal life. In entering the Jordan, Jesus converted it into what he would later call, in his dialogue with the woman at the well in Samaria, \u201cLiving Water,\u201d that would well up within us to eternal life, because as our bodies are sprinkled or immersed on the outside, on the inside we are filled with Jesus that Living Water. Second, the Holy Spirit comes down upon us to dwell within us and make us his temple. The cleansing that happens in Baptism \u201cof the Holy Spirit and of fire\u201d is precisely to make us an abode of God, so that he might dwell in us and we in him, not just here in this world but forever. The Holy Spirit incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ and we are mysteriously inducted into the interpersonal conversation who is the Holy Trinity. And third, God the Father turns toward us, incorporated through baptism into Jesus his Son in his humanity, and says, \u201cThis is my beloved Son, this is my much-loved daughter, in whom I am well-pleased.\u201d In Baptism, full as we are with Jesus the Living Water and the Holy Spirit the purifying fire, we are filled with the love of God the Father by our communion with God the Son and receiving of the Holy Spirit who is love. Saint John would exclaim to the Christians of the early Church, \u201cSee what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.\u201d In Baptism, we become God the Father\u2019s much-loved sons and daughters who takes pleasure in us just as anyone in the presence of a beloved is filled with joy. And the work of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in us as a result of Baptism is meant to help us always be pleasing to him. This is what we asked God the Father to give us in the Opening Prayer of today\u2019s Mass. We prayed, \u201cWhen Christ had been baptized in the River Jordan and as the Holy Spirit descended upon him, solemnly declared him your beloved Son, grant that your children by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, may always be well-pleasing to you.\u201d We will be always well-pleasing to God the Father by living out the reality of our baptism, the reality of our incorporation into Christ his Son, the reality of being filled with the Holy Spirit and with fire and zeal, the reality of being set free from sin so that we might live a new, holy life and pass through the open portal of heaven.<\/li>\n
- That\u2019s why the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord is always meant to be a time for us to reflect on the awesome reality of our own Baptism. On the Day of our Baptism, we could say we won the greatest lottery of all time. Not by any merit of our own, but by God\u2019s grace and, for those of us baptized as infants, the faith of our parents, we were brought to the baptismal font, changed inwardly, and made joint heirs with Christ of the Kingdom of Heaven. We became members of the divine royal family. We were given God\u2019s own immortal life inside of us and made capable of living in a holy communion with him. That\u2019s why the day of our Baptism is by far the most important day of our life and why Pope Francis never ceases to beg us to know and celebrate the day of our baptism, thank God for the gift he has given, pray for the person who baptized us as well as for our parents and Godparents. For those who are parents and godparents, it\u2019s key for us to celebrate the baptismal anniversaries of those entrusted to us. For those in the priesthood and religious life, these feasts should be celebrated with just as great joy as the anniversaries of our ordination or profession. We need to create a culture in the Church in which we celebrate not only our birthdays and saints\u2019 feast days, or anniversaries of other sacraments or sacred moments, but what is the truly most important day of our life! Pope Francis never ceases to challenge us to be protagonists in the formation of this culture.<\/li>\n
- Because the day of our baptism is so important, we should never cease to ponder the reality of what occurred on that awesome day. Paul describes it in today\u2019s second reading to St. Titus and all of us: \u201cWhen the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, 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, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.\u201dIn baptism we are reborn, made just with God by his grace, filled with the Holy Spirit, and become heirs to eternal life. In the first reading we hear the prophetic words of the Prophet Isaiah that we hear every Advent, \u201cComfort, give comfort to my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her [that] her guilt is expiated,\u201d which are fulfilled when God we, through baptism, enter into the atonement Christ won for us by his Baptism in blood and are strengthened by him on the inside. What a great comfort indeed! Psalm 104, which we prayed together, reminds us that God has constructed his palace \u201cupon the waters\u201d and sends forth his spirit, to recreate us and thereby \u201crenew the face of the earth.\u201d God makes us his dwelling place upon the waters of baptism and the Holy Spirit seeks to renew the world by renewing one baptized Christian at a time.<\/li>\n
- As we enter more deeply into the Jubilee of Hope, it\u2019s important for us to see how much hope flows from Baptism. In Jubilee Years, there\u2019s a lot of focus on the Holy Doors at St. Peter\u2019s Basilica and the other papal basilicas in Rome, which symbolize a passage from one reality into another, from life as it is more deeply into Christ who identifies himself as the \u201cdoor\u201d or gate. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, basing itself on the Council of Florence, refers to Baptism as vitae spiritualis ianua<\/em>, or door of the spiritual life, what gives access to God and to all of the other sacraments. In the baptismal rite, as the priest blesses the child\u2019s mother at the end of the ceremony, the priest describes the joy of all Christian mothers \u201cas the hope of eternal life shines upon their children.\u201d Baptism is indeed a sign of hope. Through Baptism we are not just called but become children of God as a foretaste of the great hope, how later we will be like God for we shall see him as he is. Baptism makes us temples of the Holy Spirit who reminds us of, and helps us to trust in, all Jesus\u2019 promises. Baptism, as we proclaim in the Creed, forgives us our sins and helps us to grasp God\u2019s plan for us to be free from sin and full of grace, a tremendous source of hope. Baptism likewise incorporates us into the Church, Christ\u2019s bride and body, conscious that Jesus has laid down his life to cleanse us by water and the water, and so how can we not be hopeful since Jesus has demonstrated there is nothing he won\u2019t do for us.<\/li>\n
- It\u2019s helpful prayerfully to pray about what happened to us on the day of our baptism if we want to grow in hope. On that day, we renounced Satan, all his empty promises and evil works, and professed our faith and trust in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in the holy Catholic Church in communion with all of the saints. We proclaimed our hope in a life free from sin and alive in Christ Jesus. The sacred minister prayed over our ears and lips so that we might hear God\u2019s word and proclaim his faith in a way well-pleasing to God. The Word of God we receive and share, the word that not only announces salvation history but helps us enter into it, is such a source of hope. We were covered with a white garment, an external sign of what happens to our soul in baptism, and were instructed to take that white garment unstained to the eternal life of heaven, as our vesture for the heavenly wedding feast. We\u2019re given, in other words, exactly what we need for heaven as a sign of our supreme vocation. Our baptismal candle was lit from the Easter Candle, a sign that we are now burning with the light of Christ risen from the dead, and were told, with our parents and godparents to help us, to keep that light burning with the flame of faith like the wise virgins until Christ the Bridegroom returns. That light is a perpetual reminder of our hope even as we walk in a valley of darkness. And then we processed to the altar and prayed the Our Father as beloved, well-pleasing sons and daughters of God, together with Jesus and moved inwardly by the Holy Spirit who helps us to cry out \u201cAbba, Father.\u201d We have an intimate relation with the King of Kings and have been made members of the royal family, joint heirs with Christ our hope himself. We celebrate this reality on the Feast of the Lord\u2019s Baptism as an anticipation of the celebration we should have every year on the anniversary of the day the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit came down, and God the Father pronounced us his beloved child.<\/li>\n
- Saint Teresa of Calcutta never ceased to thank God for the gift of her Baptism, and her words and actions showed the importance that gratitude for our baptism should have in life.. She was baptized in Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Skopje on August 27, 1910, the day after she was born and she called August 27 her \u201ctrue birthday.\u201d She said that the whole call to holiness is based on baptism, because like we see revealed in today\u2019s Gospel, the love of God that is manifest in baptism is, she said, \u201cthe rock on which sanctity is built.\u201d In 1997, her last year on earth, she said, \u201cSanctity is nothing but \u2026 Jesus intimately living in you, the same life we received at Baptism grown up and made perfect.\u201d The life we receive in Baptism is supposed to be completed, through cooperating with the promises of baptism. And it\u2019s because of the importance of baptism that she focused so much on making sure people die being offered the awesome privilege of Baptism and considered it one of the great joys that in the houses that care for the dying, so many have received this divine gift. Jesus\u2019 valedictory command included baptism: \u201cGo and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, knowing that I am with you always until the end of the earth.\u201d To be a missionary at all, not to mention a Missionary of Charity, is to be a missionary of baptism, of the love of God we receive there. Today we ask the great missionary of baptism\u2019s intercession that we may live out the gift of baptism \u2014\u00a0the gift of being loved by God, of being filled with the Holy Spirit, of having Jesus live within us \u2014\u00a0as fully as she did and seek, as missionaries of divine love, to bring as many people as we can to receive that same gift.<\/li>\n
- The day of our baptism finished around the altar, a sign that the Sacrament of Baptism always is meant to lead to the Sacrament of the Eucharist, where the mystery of Jesus living in us grows toward perfection. As we approach the altar today full of hope, let us burst with gratitude to God for this awesome gift, renew our baptismal promises, make sure our white garments are clean, turn up the flame of the baptismal candle we\u2019ve become, open our ears to hear his word and our lips to proclaim our faith as beloved sons and daughters and beg for the grace to be maximally pleasing to him in this life so that we may have the privilege of experiencing the fulfillment of our great hope, with Saint Teresa of Calcutta and all the saints, of entering heaven, which baptism opens, where we hope with them to please and praise God forever.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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The readings for today’s Mass were:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n