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 crowd
thronging to John by the banks of the Jordan: there was something about the man
-- his solitary life-style, his obvious asceticism, and his powerful words –
all of which made him seem like one of the old-style prophets whom the present
generation of Jewish faithful had only heard spoken of as being from what
seemed a dim and distant past. Indeed, but
there was something more about John the Baptist: an undeniable and yet
mysterious something which was causing many to think that he might possibly be
the promised Messiah -- the Christ, as St. Luke puts it -- for whose coming
Israel had been praying for centuries.
Although John did his best to dampen these expectations of him,
nevertheless, people 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 the
figure of one more young man quietly joining the queue moving forward for
baptism.
However, with the approach of that young man John’s
ministry was nearing its fulfilment and his true purpose and identity were
about to be revealed, for that young man had once – many years before – been
brought (while still in His mother’s womb) to John, himself then shortly to be
born, for John’s sanctification and preparation for his life’s work. And now that young man – Jesus of Nazareth –
was being led to John once again, this time by His heavenly Father for His Son’s
Personal commissioning and manifestation, and for John’s fulfilment as supreme
witness and faithful forerunner:
He
must increase, I must decrease.
Jesus, at His ‘coming of age’ as a son of the Law, having
long recognized and now, for the first time, openly declaring God to be His most
true and only Father, had – after being ‘lost’ in Jerusalem and, despite His
youthful longing to be doing His Father’s
business -- been led to recognize His duty to Mary His mother (and Joseph while
still alive) to return with them to Nazareth and to live there obediently until
His human maturity. He grew in grace and favour before God and men, but His own longing
remained the same, to be about His Father’s business, and He
did ever await, and ever more diligently listen for, His Father’s call in all
the circumstances of His daily life and professional work, above all, however,
in His Personal prayer and participation in synagogue worship.
He had heard of John the Baptist’s prophetic work and of
its effect on many of Israel’s faithful; and He had begun to wonder if He
should be there, where people were openly acknowledging their need of God, and
where His Father was manifestly at work .... He so longed to seek out His
Father’s traces! And thus it came about:
Jesus joined the crowd of God-seekers around John; listening and watching, not
so much for John, His publicly-acclaimed relative, as for His own supremely
beloved and, as yet, most secret Father.
When that apparently indistinguishable young man was actually
receiving John’s baptism a voice spoke from heaven and a dove descended on Him:
John saw the dove and perhaps heard the words spoken; the people, however, though
they sensed the unique atmosphere of sacred presence, saw and heard nothing humanly
distinct, because the words from heaven were directed not to them but to the
young man Himself:
When Jesus had been baptized and,
(as He) was praying, 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 had been prepared for such a vision, for God had told
him that:
One mightier than (he was)
coming, who (would) baptize (the people) with the Holy Spirit and fire.
As a result, John had been able to recognize Jesus when he
saw:
the Holy Spirit
descend in bodily form like a dove upon (Him).
John might even have
been permitted to hear those words the voice from heaven addressed to Jesus; however,
it may also have been that such personal words from the Father in heaven to His
only-begotten Son were too intimate and too holy for even one so exalted as
John the Baptist to be allowed to hear.
Consequently, we in Mother Church should recognize that we are wonderfully
privileged to know not only what the Jewish penitents by the Jordan certainly
did not know, though Jesus was bodily present in their midst, but also what
perhaps even John the Baptist himself was not allowed to hear; and that, of
course, would be in perfect accord with the words Jesus was to speak later
concerning John (Matthew 11:11):
Among those born of women there
has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the
kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
Nevertheless, whether or not he heard the words, John 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 (Genesis
8:10-12):
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.
Noah 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 surviving
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
was coming to its end and that they would 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, with Whom the voice of the Father declared Himself
delighted, was -- as Son -- One with the Spirit in the glory of the Father; He was
thereby, indeed, able as the Messianic leader to receive the fullness of the Holy
Spirit in His human nature and, indeed, would shortly ‘deploy’ that human fullness
of Holiness and Power for the very first time by entering upon the ultimate preparation
for His public ministry through an encounter with and victory over His
arch-enemy, the Devil, in the desert, the Devil’s very own dwelling-place.
We learn from words of Jesus recorded by St. Luke (12:49),
words spoken shortly before His final and conclusive 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 received in His own humanity the Spirit He would
subsequently pour out over human kind in and through His Church; for the hearts
and minds of those true disciples who would have faith in, and give obedience
to, Jesus could only be cleansed of their native sinfulness by such a Gift as
the Spirit, Who, in His cleansing activity would indeed show Himself as a
Spirit of fire: a purifying fire preparing the way for the new life and growth
of a new People, the Body of Christ.
That ardent longing of Jesus to ‘send fire on the earth’ was,
indeed, the very purpose for which, having risen from the dead, He expressly equipped
His Church, the very work He confirmed His Apostles to spearhead:
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. (Acts 2:1-3)
John the Baptist had spoken of the work that Jesus’ baptism
would accomplish when he declared:
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 John, the greatest of Old Testament prophets,
understood the image of fire. However,
that is an understanding we can and should 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 He would kindle and
enflame within them. For the world at
large, however -- for those stumbling and hurting themselves in the darkness of
sin -- He would show Himself to be the Spirit of Love and of Truth, a tongue of fire enabling the Apostles
and prophets of Mother Church to proclaim the love of God and His Good News of
peace for all of good will (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 delighting in its own disfigurement … if He is to be heard and
appreciated by them in the manner of that beautiful word-picture painted by the
great prophet Isaiah (52:7) who says:
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;
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 fire, as purifying
fire in our very deepest selves, purging us ever more and more from our
sinfulness, and enabling us to commit ourselves ever more whole-heartedly to Our
Lord and Saviour. 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 the sins of our world. We cannot 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 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 is able to find a welcome in the
hearts of the men and women of our day thanks to Mother Church’s authentic proclamation
of, and faithful witness to, the Good News of Jesus, and by our own deepest
prayers and most sincere endeavours to allow the Spirit to work fully and
freely in us, leading us along the ways of Jesus: ways of self-sacrifice for
the good of our brethren and ways of gratitude and praise for the glory of our
Father in heaven.
