New Life, New Identity, New Call

Sunday, January 12, 2025

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Is 42:1-4, 6-7/Acts 10:34-38/Lk 3:15-16, 21-22

or, in Year C, Is 40:1-5, 9-11/Ti 2:11-14; 3:4-7/Lk 3:15-16, 21-22 (Lectionary #21)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011225.cfm

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Isaiah’s Prophecy

The first reading on Sunday is always chosen to match the theme of the Gospel reading. And the Responsorial Psalm gives the key to the first reading. So, the Responsorial Psalm tells us what to look for in both readings. Today the theme is, “The Lord will bless his people with peace” (29:1-10). We will see how peace is the fruit of Baptism.

Isaiah 42: 1-7 prophesies that the Messiah is going to “establish justice on earth.” A current theme of “bumper sticker wisdom” is; ‘If you want peace, work for justice.” They go together.

But what is new in Isaiah is the way the Messiah will do this: “Not crying out, not shouting…. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench.” On the individual level this gives personal peace. Jesus will have patience with us. He will not reject us because of our weakness and barely smoldering faith.

On the global scale, he will “bring forth justice on the earth” without violence. Using no power but truth and love. “The coastlands will wait for his teaching.” He came to teach, not terrify.

Jesus came as “a light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind.” Baptism is called the “sacrament of faith,” or, in the Eastern Church, just “Enlightenment.” Faith is the mystery of sharing in God’s own knowing act. Its effect is “to bring out… from prison those who sit in darkness” (see Matthew 4:16, Luke 1:79; 11:34). Jesus said, “If you are truly my disciples, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). This freedom gives peace.

The Mystery

In Luke 3:15-22 John the Baptizer proclaims: “One more powerful than I is coming… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Christian Baptism is a mystery. The heavens open: it is an act of God himself making contact with us. The Holy Spirit descends on us as on Jesus at the Jordan; not “in visible form,” but with visible effects. Baptism is not complete without the “gift of the Holy Spirit.” In the early Church recipients sometimes “spoke in tongues and prophesied” (Acts 2:38, 8:15; 10:46; 19:2-6). Today the Gift of the Spirit is just as visible, though not necessarily in the same way. It is seen most commonly in the effects of our baptismal anointing into the mission of Jesus Prophet, Priest and King. We will take up each of these anointings specifically, beginning with the reflections on the Easter readings, but we can say generally that we experience and express the Gift of the Spirit most unambiguously when we take on the mission of Jesus, acting “through him, with him and in him” as his risen body on earth, in the ‘unity of the Holy Spirit,” intent on giving “all honor and glory” to the Father.

At our Baptism the Father speaks to us the same words he said to Jesus: “You are my Son, the Beloved; on you my favor rests.” In Jesus’ Baptism these words revealed his identity; in our Baptism they confer it. What Jesus already was, we become.  This is for us a “new creation” (2Corinthians 5:17). In Genesis, the formula for creation was: “God said…. And it was so” (1:1-24 and see Psalm 104:30). At Baptism God speaks, and what he says “is so”: we become in deepest truth the sons and daughters of the Father.

We become this in the only way it is possible: by being incorporated into the body of him who is the only Son of the Father. We are children of God only as filii in Filio, “sons and daughters in the Son.” In Baptism we “become Christ” (John Paul II, quoting St. Augustine). St. Paul uses the term “in Christ” or its equivalent 164 times. This is the mystery of our Christian identity.

We have a new identity. We are no longer just human beings. We have become divine by “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Grace” simply means “the favor of sharing in the divine life of God”. We proclaim this at the beginning of every Mass. If we listen to the words at Mass, our self-awareness will gradually be transformed. Then  “The Lord will bless his people with peace.”

“Good News of Peace”:

In Acts 10:34-38 Cornelius, a Gentile, invited Peter to his house, where he and others were assembled to  “listen to all the Lord has commanded you to say.”

What Peter said was: “This is the message: God sent word… announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.”

The initial “Good News” about Jesus in this first recorded preaching to a group of Gentiles is that he “went about doing good works and healing all who were in the grip of the devil.” Only afterwards does Peter speak of Christ’s death and resurrection (not included in today’s reading). If there is a lesson here, it may be that the first way to present the Good News to people unprepared to hear the whole mystery is just by “doing good works” to help heal them from the painful consequences of sin: their own and the sins of others. Christianity is not all about suffering with Jesus. That can hardly be avoided, but we should not forget that the Way of Jesus is still the healthiest and happiest way to live on earth. We should try, by word and lifestyle, to make that evident.

We sometimes forget that Baptism by nature commits us to taking on the mission of Jesus. Paul VI said the Church “exists to evangelize.” By Baptism Jesus doesn’t just share his divine life with us so that we can share his joy in heaven; he takes our bodies to be his own so that in us he can continue his mission on earth. We are chosen to be sent. We are sent, not just to announce, but to be the Good News. If we are not “news” by our lifestyle, and by the visible “fruit of the Spirit” in us, beginning with “love, joy and peace” (Galatians 5:22), then, no matter what we say it will not be credible. 

As we continue reflecting on the readings of Ordinary Time, we should be alert to what is “news” and what is “good” in the Good News. How did Jesus proclaim it? How did he present himself? What did people see in him? How did they respond and why? This will give us an understanding of the mystery of our Baptism — especially if we experience that mystery by living it out in action.

Insight: How is your Baptism influencing your life right now? How was it taught to you? Did you grow up understanding Baptism as just a one-time event that “washed away” Original Sin and gave you “grace”? (How would you define grace?) Or is Baptism the event that changed your whole life and transforms every action of your day, every day? An event that gave you a new sense of your identity, one that is with you all the time? In short, is Baptism for you, right now, a constant self-awareness that makes your every thought, word and action an experience of mystery?

Initiative: Put a glass of water where you work to remind you of Baptism.

Saturday After Epiphany

Saturday, January 11, 2025

Christmas Weekday

1 Jn 5:14-21/Jn 3:22-30 (Lectionary #217)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011125.cfm

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The Responsorial Psalm assures us, “The Lord takes delight in his people” (Psalm 149). That includes us.

 1John 5: 14-21 keeps insisting that “we know” God takes delight in us because “we are… in his Son Jesus Christ.” Because we are “in Christ,” sharing in his divine life, God is able to “see and love in us what he sees and loves in Christ” (Sunday Preface VII). God’s own truth and love are in us, and they are our own. That is a fact more basic than our lapses in living by them. Our sins are failures to live up to what we are, but we still are what we are.

There is “deadly” or “mortal” sin that separates us from live union with Jesus. There is also sin that does not: “All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.” How can we know the difference?

Before Vatican II Catholics were taught that many things were “mortal sin” which in fact were not. These errors probably grew from a sincere pastoral concern to keep people from doing things that could be very damaging to themselves or others. Legal terminology like “grave obligation” and phrases like “serious matter” used by preachers and teachers were gradually assumed to be interchangeable with the precise theological term “grave matter,” which is an identifying element of “mortal sin.” Then all who failed to keep any law labeled “grave obligation,” or through weakness engaged in any forbidden self-indulgence, especially sexual, thought themselves deprived of divine life, excluded from receiving the Body of Christ in Eucharist, and provisionally sentenced to eternal Hell. This is distorted “Catholic guilt,” and a long way from John!

John’s focus is on the mystery of the divine life we receive by believing in Jesus Christ. And God’s “steadfast love” will never withdraw this life from us. We can withdraw from the life by withdrawing from Christ — either by explicit rejection of him (which John equates with rejection of the Christian community), or by the cool, deliberate choice to act in a way so maliciously evil it is totally incompatible with Christ’s life in us.

John 3: 22-30 highlights the mystery of our salvation by contrasting the gesture of repentance through John’s baptism before Christ’s death with the sacramental Baptism through which we “become Christ.” The first gave benefits proportional to one’s repentance. The second gives a transformation on the scale of God’s infinite power and love. It is this God sees in us when “The Lord takes delight in his people.” It is also what we should see in one another.

Initiative: If you want to know Jesus, accept him as universal Savior. Don’t exclude people by uninformed judgments (which you have no right to make) that they are “in sin.” Don’t even be quick to judge your own sins as “mortal.”

Friday After Epiphany

Friday, January 10, 2025

Christmas Weekday

1 Jn 5:5-13/Lk 5:12-16 (Lectionary #216)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011025.cfm

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The Responsorial Psalm sings, “Praise the Lord, Jerusalem” (Psalm 147).

1John 5: 5-13 tells us why: it is because we have the life of God in us, and we can know it. “And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever possesses the Son has life; whoever does not possess the Son of God does not have life.”

How do we know we really are in life-giving union with Jesus Christ? “There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood.”

If the experience of the early Church (Acts 2: 41-47) is a model, we receive the testimony of the Spirit when we “devote ourselves to the apostles' teaching,” to seeking felt, experienced growth in union with God through prayer and reflection on the Scriptures — individual and communal. We receive the testimony of “the water,” of the physical, visible life of the Church embodied in the sacraments, when we devote ourselves to “fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” with the community. And we receive the testimony of “the blood” when our actions bear witness that we have “died” to this world’s passing benefits and re-oriented our lives to seek fulfillment “in Christ.” Basic to this is our attitude toward material goods. In the early Church some “would sell their possessions and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” What matters is not how, but that our lifestyle should be proof of radical detachment from selfishness and absorption in this world’s promises.

Luke 5: 12-16 encourages us. We may feel that we are too “unclean” to experience God. The answer to this is to go to Jesus as the outcast leper did and say, “Lord, if you wish you can make me clean.”

Jesus will give us the same answer he gave him: “I do will it. Be made clean.” But he will tell us we also have to do something. The leper was already cleansed, but for his experience to be complete Jesus told him, “Go, show yourself to the priest….” In the Church the sacrament of Reconciliation makes forgiveness a felt experience and carries forward the healing process. The same principle tells us we must choose to act if we want evidence that we do in fact have life through Jesus Christ. The basic choices are prayer (the “Spirit”), involvement in the community (the “water”), and decisions that bear witness to Christ’s values (the “blood”). If we choose to act, we will feel like singing “Praise the Lord, Jerusalem” because we will know we are alive. His love has extended to embrace us too.

Initiative: If you want to know Jesus, accept him as universal Savior. Seek to experience grace. Do what you have to do to know your response is real.