As the Church marks the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Fr Edmund Power, OSB, offers his thoughts on the day’s liturgical readings
I wonder how many of you know the date of your baptism? I discovered relatively recently that mine is January 18 (I won’t say the year!), six days after today’s feast. With the Baptism of the Lord we conclude the Christmas Season, which is really the “Epiphany” Season: a series of manifestations of the Lord’s presence in our human world, starting with His birth and concluding today with the inauguration of His public life.
I asked about our baptism: plunged (symbolically) into the waters, we die so as to rise to new life with Christ. Identified with Him in His Easter mystery, we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pt 1:4).
In ancient thought it was believed that there were four elements that represented the entirety of the world: air, earth, fire and water. We see today the play of these in the drama that unfolds at the River Jordan. John the Baptist proclaims that the one mightier than I will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and we remember that the word “spirit” in Greek also means breathe or air, and that the movement of air in our lungs enables us to live. The fire of God’s love purifies, sometimes through suffering, and warms us. We bring our bodies, formed … of dust from the ground (Gen 2:7). In fact the Hebrew name Adam is linked to the word for the ground or earth. And when Jesus enters the river, it is not for the washing away of sin, but, in the thought of the Fathers of the Church, so as to sanctify the water of baptism for all time. In the words of the ancient hymn for Epiphanytide: “The Lamb of God is manifest again in Jordan’s water blest, and He Whom sin had never known, by washing hath our sins undone”.
There is a detail today, mentioned only in the Gospel of Luke: that Jesus was praying immediately after His baptism, and it was at that very moment that the voice of the Father came from heaven. Given our baptismal identification with the Lord, the Father’s words are addressed also to us: you are my beloved (son or daughter); with you I am well pleased. The gospel of the last day of the Christmas Season concludes with this declaration of God’s love for each of us. This Sunday is also the first Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Jubilee Year 2025. Being loved by God is what enables us to embrace the message of the Year: hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5).
