BAPTISM of Our Lord (C)
(Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts of the Apostles
10:34-38; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22)
There was an atmosphere of tense expectancy among the
crowds thronging to John by the banks of the Jordan: there was something about
the man -- his solitary life-style, his obvious asceticism, and his fiery words
resonant with spiritual authority – all of which made him seem like one of the great
prophets of old -- most especially Elijah -- of whom the present generation of
Jewish faithful had heard traditional memories from their fathers, tales always
told and heard with awesome respect.
Indeed, there was something special, something very
different, about John the Baptist; he was undeniably brave in condemning royal
scandals and Lawlessness, and there was a yet more mysterious something about
him when he spoke about God and His mission for John himself and His purpose for
Israel’s immediate future, all of which was causing many of them to think that
he might possibly be the Christ, the promised Messiah, for whose coming Israel
had been praying for centuries.
Although John did his best to dampen people’s expectations
of him, nevertheless, they still came crowding to him for his baptism, and they
were so centred on the person of John that they probably did not notice at all
an unknown young man quietly joining the queue moving forward for baptism. Nevertheless, John was about to show that this
hitherto unknown young man was not unknown to God; indeed, he was the essential
core of what was to be God’s ultimate purpose for Israel. For, when that young man was actually receiving
John’s baptism:
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 beloved Son; with You I am well pleased."
John saw the dove
and he recognized Jesus, for God had told him that:
One mightier than he (John)
was coming, Who (would) baptize (the people) with the Holy Spirit and fire.
John might even have been permitted to hear those words the
voice from heaven spoke to Jesus after John had baptized Him; nevertheless, whether
or not John did hear the words, he most certainly saw the Spirit descending
like a dove on Jesus, and would, undoubtedly, have immediately recalled what
had happened to Noah in the beginning:
Noah sent the dove out from
the ark. Then the dove came to him in
the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth; and
Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. (Gen. 8:10-12)
Noah had realised that mankind’s punishment had come to an
end when the dove returned to the Ark bearing the olive branch in its beak, for
that was a sign that the waters of the flood were retreating and land was once
more to be seen: land waiting to bring forth fruit again for those saved from
the punishing flood. Likewise, when John
saw the Spirit descend like a dove on Jesus it is highly likely that he was
prophetically privileged to appreciate that mankind’s ancient servitude to sin
– against which he, John, had spent his prophetic life campaigning -- was
coming to its end and that true Israelites would soon be enabled to find, once
again, acceptance and peace with God through this mysterious young relative of
his, Jesus, now standing before him, dripping water and engrossed in prayer. John knew well those words of Isaiah which we
heard in our first reading:
Behold! My Servant whom I
uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights!
I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the
Gentiles. He will not fail nor be
discouraged, till He has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands
shall wait for His law.
Indeed, it was with such a One in mind that he had told the
waiting people:
I indeed baptize you with
water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to
loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
The Son, of Whom the voice of the Father declared His soul
delighted in, was -- as the Word of God -- One with the Holy Spirit in the
glory of the Father; He was therefore able to receive the fullness of the Holy
Spirit in His human nature. Therefore, as
Jesus, the Messianic leader, He would
shortly ‘deploy’, so to speak, that, His human fullness of the Spirit of
Holiness, Wisdom, and Power, for the establishment of the Kingdom of God: in
His imminent encounter with and triumph over the devil in the desert, before entering
upon His definitive public ministry in Israel for the salvation of both Jews
and Gentiles and the foundation of His
future Church.
We learn from words of Jesus recorded by St. Luke (12:49),
words spoken shortly before His final and supreme encounter with the Satan on
Calvary, with what dispositions Jesus received His baptismal endowment of the
Spirit:
I came to send fire on the earth,
and how I wish it were already kindled!
Jesus, as I said, received in His own humanity the fulness
of that Spirit He would subsequently pour out over human kind through His
Church. The hearts and minds of those
called to faith in Jesus could only be purified of their sinfulness by His gift
of the Holy Spirit, to be not only with them but in them, ever purifying
and sanctifying them. And in that work of
purification He would indeed be a Spirit of fire, preparing the way for new life
and growth. Thus, purified themselves by Jesus’
Gift of the Spirit, the Apostles would then begin to fulfil that secret longing
of Jesus to ‘send fire on the earth’ for which, having risen from the dead, He
expressly equipped His Church (Acts 2:1-3):
When the Day of Pentecost had
fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven,
as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were
sitting. Then there appeared to them
divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.
When John the Baptist had spoken of the work that Jesus’
baptism would accomplish, he had said, as you heard:
He will baptize you with the
Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan
is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and
gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable
fire.
That was how he, the greatest of Old Testament prophets,
understood the image of fire. However,
that is an understanding we can appreciate more fully in the light of the subsequent
work of Jesus here on earth and of His Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. The Spirit would indeed ‘burn the chaff’ in
the hearts of His chosen ones, and the greater their obedience and docility,
the more they would allow Him a free hand in their lives, the greater would be
the blaze of purifying love with which He would consume them. For the world at large, however, for those
stumbling and hurting themselves in the darkness of sin, He is the Spirit of
Love and of Truth, a gentle tongue proclaiming Good News as Jesus promised His
apostles (Matthew 10:20):
It is not you who speak, but
the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.
People of God, let us learn from the baptism of Our Lord
something of the nature of our vocation.
If the Spirit of Jesus is to be heard by the world around us, a deeply
sinful world; if He is to be heard by them in the manner of that beautiful
word-picture painted by the great prophet Isaiah:
How beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who
brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation (Isaiah 52:7);
and if, indeed, we are to help our world encounter Jesus as
He Himself wanted to be found by them:
The Spirit of the LORD is upon
Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me
to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed (Luke 4:18),
then, People of God, we must implore the Spirit of Jesus to
work in us as a purifying fire: purging us ever more and more of our
multi-layered and long-disguised-and-indulged sinfulness, and enabling us to
commit ourselves more and more whole-heartedly to the Lord our Saviour, and to the
furthering and fulfilment of His work on earth.
That is the only spirit of sacrifice, the only testimony of fraternal
love, that can make us true disciples of Him Who sacrificed Himself for our
sins and the sins of the whole world.
Let us not, in these days of widespread Godlessness, self-confidence
and self-satisfaction, trust in our own presumed zeal and good intentions, for
what is needed most of all today is not that we, as individuals, show off
ourselves as good people by doing good things; nor that we, as a body,
continually try to come up with new ideas, new gimmicks, to attract people; but
that the Spirit of Jesus Himself finds a welcome into the hearts of the men and
women of our day through our sincere service of and humble witness to Mother
Church’s authentic proclamation of Jesus’ Good News, and by our own deepest
prayers and humble endeavours to allow the Spirit to work fully and freely in
us, leading us along the ways of Jesus for the good of our brethren and for
the praise and glory for our Father in heaven.
(2004,
amended 2010, not given anywhere.)
