Jesus’ baptism: we are God’s children and Christ’s co-heirs

Baptism of the Lord, Year C
Readings:
First: Is 40:1-5,9-11
Second: Ti 2:11-14, 3:4-7
Gospel: Lk 3:15-16, 21-22

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is important. In 1955, Pope Pius XII separated it from the celebration of the Epiphany (then Jan. 6) and moved it to Jan. 13. In 1969, Pope St. Paul VI transferred it to the Sunday after Jan. 6. In 1996, Pope St. John Paul II made Christ’s baptism one of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary.

What is its significance?

John was already “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” St. Mark says. He was baptizing people in the Jordan River “in great numbers” as they “confessed their sins.”

However, Jesus was sinless. Why did he need baptism?

Jesus had, in a sense, taken on the sin of the human race at his incarnation, when he became a man “for our salvation,” as we say in the Creed.

With his baptism, he began his public life, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He accepted and inaugurated “his mission as God’s suffering servant,” allowing “himself to be numbered among sinners.” As John realized, he was already “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

(It was at his last supper, when he gave us his body to eat and his blood to drink, thus grafting us on to him like branches on to a vine, that he became fully infected with our sin. As St. Paul says, “God made him who did not know sin to be sin.” After that, he deserved and suffered what our sins deserved.)

“Baptism” comes from the Greek baptizein, meaning to “plunge” or “immerse.” John’s baptism involved a symbolic cleansing through immersion in water.

(The role of water in baptism is crucial. No other liquid may be substituted.)

However, John himself told the people, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I” will “baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

“John’s baptism was for repentance,” the Catechism says; “Baptism in water and the Spirit will be a new birth.”

When Jesus was baptized, it explains, the Holy Spirit “sanctified” the water. Accordingly, the Church prays at the Easter Vigil that “the power of the Holy Spirit” will “come down into the baptismal font.”

At the instant of Jesus’ baptism, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

That is exactly what happens at our own baptism, says the Catechism. “Everything that happened to Christ” tells us that, “after the bath of water, the Holy Spirit swoops down upon us from high heaven” and, “adopted by the Father’s voice, we become sons of God.”

Baptism is truly what St. Paul calls it: a rebirth. Afterward, we are no longer just God’s creatures – things he has created – but his adopted children.

In his 1986 encyclical on the Holy Spirit, Dominum et Vivificantem (“Lord and Giver of Life”), Pope John Paul stressed the importance of the “great missionary mandate which contains, in a sense, the Trinitarian formula of Baptism: ‘Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’”

(The Church insists that no other words be substituted.)

As the Pope said, this formula expresses the “life-giving power of the sacrament,” for, by baptism, we are reborn into the life that God lives in the Trinity. Speaking in unison with his one and only begotten Son, we may now dare to address him as “our Father” – Jesus’ and ours – something no Jew ever did before Christ.

Moreover, as God’s children, we are now co-heirs with Christ to God’s kingdom. Once, after baptizing a baby, I said impulsively, “This child now has as much right to heaven as Jesus Christ himself!” Then I stopped, appalled. Had I blasphemed? No; it is true!

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English. The whole course is available in written form and Sessions 1-14 in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 15,"The Communion of the Saints in the Body of Christ," will be available in YouTube form starting Jan. 9.