Jesus Gets Baptized

Today the Catholic Church and many Protestant churches celebrates the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. In the Gospel we hear St. Luke’s account of the event. Jesus goes down to the Jordan, where John the Baptist is baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus allows himself to be baptized by John, after which “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.'”

Why does Jesus allow himself to be baptized? He was sinless and thus had no need of the healing power of the ritual. Indeed, in Matthew’s account of the event (although not in the Luke account we hear today), John tries to argue with Jesus that it is John who should be coming to Jesus for baptism, not he other way around. But Jesus is insistent that John baptize him.

The answer has to do with the voice from heaven. In the words of one commentator, Jesus submitted himself to baptism “in order to invite us to share in his relationship with the Father announced from the heavens.”

St. Paul says that at our baptism, we are baptized into Christ. When we are baptized into Christ, we receive the same Spirit who descended upon Jesus from heaven. And just as God declared Jesus to be His beloved son, we are the beloved sons and daughters.

It is worth spending time praying with this Gospel passage. And not just hearing God speak to Jesus, but hearing God say to you: “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

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All is Already Blessed

At the Mass I attended yesterday morning at St. Thomas More church in St. Paul, a baby was baptized.  As we watched the celebrant bless the water with which the baby would be baptized, I was reminded of an experience I had one day during my retreat.

Earlier in that day, I had been praying with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist (itself a powerful prayer experience).  That afternoon, as I was standing on the sand at the ocean’s edge and, reviewing the scene, I said to Jesus, “Baptize me, Lord.”  And I saw Jesus held out his arm over the ocean and said, “I baptize you with the water of my father’s creation.”  And I stood with my eyes closed as the waves rolled in, feeling the spray of the water (and a lot more than spray up to my knees).

In that moment, I had a deep realization that all is blessed.  That all is already holy.  That all of God’s creation is already sanctified by the divine touch, divine breath.

There is no need to bless the water with which we are baptized.  The act of blessing the water that we call “holy water” doesn’t itself bless the water.  The words of blessing are merely an outward sign of the blessing that already exists.

All is blessed by God.

 

Power From the Sun (Son)

Amazing what you learn in Mass!  In the homily at today’s Mass I learned that Superman’s powers come from the sun.  I always thought Superman was just, well, super – that as an alien being he had all these powers in himself. But it turns out that (apparently since his home world orbited a red sun) when the young Kal-El reached Earth, the Earth’s sun gave him the powers he possesses.  So all that ability to fly, to leap tall buildings in a single bound, etc, all come from the Sun; without the Sun, Superman can’t do any of those super things.

A simple but effective analogy, and perfect for a Mass in which we celebrated the Baptism of a baby into the faith.  The priest observed that Baptism knit the new member of the community to the source of all of our strength – Christ.

And it is a source we need to go back to over and over again – in our prayer, in our Eucharistic celebrations, always.  The things we are asked to do as Christians – to love not only our friends, but our enemies; to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world, not just to our small circle of parishioners; to die to self and rise to Christ – are not things we can do on our own.  They are things that require that we be connected deeply to our source – the Son.

When we are so connected, in the words of Philippians: we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us.

Baptism and Confirmation

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the Baptism of Our Lord. To add to the celebration of this feast, two babies were baptized at the Mass I attended. I always find it moving to participate in a liturgy where we welcome new members of the Body of Christ.

Today was also the day we talked about Baptism in our RCIA program at Our Lady of Lourdes. (I’d love to claim I planned it this way, but at the time I put the RCIA schedule together, I had not realized today was the Baptism of Our Lord.)

Introducing our coverage of the sacraments, my talk today introduced the subject of the sacraments and covered two of the three Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism and Confirmation. At the end of my talk, I gave the participants some time to reflect on the presence of the spirit of God in their lives, after which we had some time for discussion.

You can access a recording of my talk here or stream it from the icon below. (The podcast runs for 33:39.)

Reflecting on our Baptism

Today is the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord and our Gospel reading was St. Matthew’s account of that event. At the Mass I attended at my parish this morning, two infants were baptized.

The celebration of those two Baptisms this morning is invites us to relate Jesus’ baptism to our own receipt of the sacrament.

During his homily this morning, Fr. Dale referenced Martin Luther’s suggestion that we remind ourselves every day of the fact that we have been baptized. Luther said, “A truly Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism once begun and ever to be continued.” In Fr. Dale’s words, “When I remember my baptism, I remember who I am and whose I am.” Through baptism, God declares that we are beloved children of God’s.

At the women’s retreat day I offered yesterday at my parish, I invited the participants to reflect on this reality. Here is the handout I gave them for their prayer, using the Gospel reading we heard at Mass today. If you haven’t yet spent time today praying with Jesus’ baptism (or even if you have), perhaps you might take some time with it.

The Sacrament of Baptism

Bill Nolan and I are in the middle of a three-week program at St. Thomas Apostle on the Sacraments of Initiation. Our subject this week was the sacrament of Baptism.

Bill provided some historical context for Baptism, focusing on Jewish roots, the early church, Augustine and original sun, the movement from adult to child baptism, and the eventual separation of the initiation sacraments into separate rituals.

I then spoke about the spiritual significance of baptism, focusing on the radical nature of our baptismal promises. I also noted the Vatican II emphasis on baptism as a sacramental bond of unity linking all who have been reborn in Christ and as that from which we “are assigned to the apostolate by the Lord himself.” (For that portion of the discussion, I shared some thoughts of Michael Himes on the meaning of our Baptismal promises.) We then moved to a discussion of the power of symbol and some initiation rites in other faith traditions.

In the discussion we had, we talked about Baptism not only as event, but as process, as we gain a deeper and deeper appreciation of the meaning of our baptismal promises as we grow in our faith.

You can access a recording of Bill and my talk here or stream it from the icon below. The podcast runs for 55:29.

Is It Possible You Were Never Not a Catholic?

One of the reasons I enjoy doing book talks on Growing in Love and Wisdom is that I get such interesting questions during the event. The range of questions is broad – raging from my own conversion experience, to specific points of similarity or difference between Christianity and Buddhism to forms of prayer and the challenges of maintaining a regular prayer practice, and then some.

When I was speaking at Marquette University the other night, one of the audience members asked me whether it was possible to say that, notwithstanding all of the years I spent as a Buddhist, was it possible to say I was never not a Catholic.

I thought it was an interesting question in that the answer rests on what it means to say that one is Catholic. If being Catholic is simply about self-identification as a Catholic, then the answer to my questioner was a simple no. For twenty years I assuredly did not self-identify as Catholic.

If being Catholic means simply having been baptized, then once baptized Catholic, always a Catholic. (We learned in grade school that Baptism left an indelible mark on our souls.) In that sense of the term, since I was baptized as a child, I’ve always been Catholic.

What I’be been puzzling over is whether there is another way to understand that question that allows me to answer the question in a more thoughtful way. I’m not actually sure that I can, but I want to think about it some more.

What I can say is that, in retrospect, it is clear to me that whatever I called myself, God was with me. That I may not have been looking at or for God, but God was always looking at me. And that whatever direction I thought my life was going, I was moving with and toward God. And maybe that’s enough for me to know.

WIth You I am Well Pleased

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The Gospel we hear today is St. Luke’s account of the event. Jesus goes down to the Jordan, where John the Baptist is baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus allows himself to be baptized by John, after which “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.'”

Why does Jesus allow himself to be baptized? He was sinless and thus had no need of the healing power of the ritual. Indeed, in Matthew’s account of the event (although not in the Luke account we hear today), John tries to argue with Jesus that it is John who should be coming to Jesus for baptism, not he other way around. But Jesus is insistent that John baptize him.

The answer has to do with the voice from heaven. In the words of one commentator, Jesus submitted himself to baptism “in order to invite us to share in his relationship with the Father announced from the heavens.”

St. Paul says that at our baptism, we are baptized into Christ. When we are baptized into Christ, we receive the same Spirit who descended upon Jesus from heaven. And just as God declared Jesus to be His beloved son, we are the beloved sons and daughters.

We too – each one of us – can hear God say to us, “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Participating in the Priestly, Prophetic and Kingly Mission of Christ

I spent the past two days at a seminar on Woman in the Church and in the World, sponsored by the Siena Symposium for Women, Family, and Culture. The seminar included some wonderful sessions on the problems confronting women, the Marian Dimension of the Church, the family as “domestic Church,” the mission of the laity, among others.

Near the end of the first day, we talked about an important subject not unique to women – the role of the laity. We looked at some beautiful language in Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation, Christifideles Laici (The Vocation and Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and the World) addressing a subject we don’t often think about: “the priestly, prophetic and kingly dignity of the entire People of God.”

When we receive the sacrament of Baptism, we are anointed with oil as a sign that we are joined to Christ and share in his threefold mission as prophet, priest, and king. One of the aims of Christifideles Laici is to remind us of this charge, to encourage us to take seriously our role in this mission.

What does it mean for us to share in the priestly, prophetic and kingly mission of Christ? (Do we even think about that question?)

To be a prophet in the Christian sense means to “accept the Gospel in faith and to proclaim it in word and deed.”

To participate in the kingly mission means to “seek to overcome in [ourselves] the kingdom of sin.” Someone suggested in our discussion that for us to act kingly means for us to exercise sovereignty over ourself to that we may then make a gift of ourself to others.

To share in Jesus priestly mission, which for Jesus meant sacrificing himself on the cross, means for us to let all of our activities become spiritual sacrifices, that is, to carry out all of our deeds in the Spirit and with love.

It is a tall order. But that is what we are called to by our baptism.

Priest, Prophet and King

Last night I read the homily given by Archbishop Oscar Romero during a Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday in 1977, which spoke about the way in which the day’s celebration reminds us of the great works of the Holy Spirit. One of the works of the Holy Spirit Romero highlighted was the transmission of the “unique priesthood of Christ, who is also king and prophet” to those who have been baptized, a transmission that “enables them to be a priestly, royal and prophetic people.”

We don’t tend to remember and don’t always take seriously the idea that when we were baptized, we received an anointing with chrism as “a visible representation of the fact that this child of the flesh was incorporated into the Church, into the People of God, into this priestly, royal and prophetic people.” Yet it is something that is important to remember. Our anointing as priest, prophet and king means that each one of us – not only those who have been ordained or who occupy some other special position in the church – has a mission. As Romero put it, we lay people are “neither religious nor priests of the altar but [we] are priests in the world, prophets in the world, and royalty who ought to work so that the Kingdom of God reigns in society, in its structures and in the world.” Elucidating on what that means, Romero preached

You have to proclaim, like the prophets, like the prophetic people anointed by the Spirit that anointed Jesus, yes you have to announce the marvelous deeds of God in the world, you have to encourage the good that is done in the world and emphatically denounce the evil that is done in the world.

We are the Church. It is fine to look to the bishops and priests to do their part, but by our baptism “we are not simply spectator’s of the Church’s activity.” We are priests, prophets and kings and we have a mission to accomplish, “a royal mission that makes God dominant above all other things that exist in the world.”