BAPTIZED WITH JESUS’ BAPTISM

THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD: Mt 3:13-17

John classified his own baptism as a baptism in “water for repentance”; and people who came to him,  confessed their own sins. He was preparing the way for the one who would baptize “with the Holy Spirit” (Mt 3:6-11).

So John could not believe his own eyes, when he saw Jesus coming among the people to be baptized. And when his turn came, John protested and refused: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Mt 3:14). Like John, we may also look on Jesus’s baptism with perplexity and confusion, questioning ourselves: Did the Sinless need to repent and be purified in a baptism of water?

We must remember that the Son of God took incarnation seriously, going to the bitter end of it, as the song of the letter to the Philippians tells us that he “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2:7). By entering the waters of river Jordan, among a crowd of sinners, Jesus was being burdened with the oppression of the sins of our humanity. However, going through the  baptism of John, he changed it into a baptism in the  Spirit that transforms and renews, bringing into place a new humanity in his own image, as the Son of God.

Our baptism is Jesus’ baptism, a baptism in the Spirit, who comes upon us and transforms us from within, so that the Father can whisper to us in the Spirit what he said to Jesus: This is my son, my beloved; and my favour rests on him.

Baptized in Jesus, we are assured of God’s favour, because his love is so great that he accepts us as his beloved children.

Our baptism was a great gift of love, of God’s unconditional love. In spite of breaking faith with God so many times, by our evil ways, he does not stop loving us. It is time for us to recognise and accepte that love, by actions of love to all those in whom we must recognize God’s image, the face of Jesus. Pope Francis reminded us that Christian love is concret and active, directed mainly to the suffering ones who live in our midst. No better way to celebrate our own baptism than to recognise that we were constituted into the family of God by that same baptism.