Baptism of Our Lord Year A

The first Sunday in ordinary time is dedicated to the Baptism of the Lord. This event marks Christ’s entry into public life. But, this event does not merely signal a transition in the life of Christ. For Matthew, this event is also cosmic in magnitude as Christ’s public manifestation to the world is also at the same time, the revelation that He is the beloved Son of God. Matthew wants to alert his Jewish audience that not far in the background of his narration of Christ’s baptism they should hear the echo of the Book of Genesis.

The opening of the heaven and the descent of the Holy Spirit like a dove recall two events in the history of salvation. First, the creation of the world and second, the aftermath of the flood. In the beginning, the Spirit hovered over the formless mass and after the destruction of the deluge, a dove signalled to Noah that a new era has begun. At the River Jordan, the Spirit in the shape of a dove hovered over Christ showed that mankind was now entering a history like never before.

In the meantime, dazzled as we are by the immensity of this cosmic event, we might just miss out on what this new history really meant. John preaches a baptism of repentance. For the Jews, a man’s sins belong to realm of private business between him and God. Something which many of you would like. But, here, at the Jordan there is a public admission of one’s sin. Thus, John’s protest is appropriate. He, who is sinless, does not need repentance. And yet, Christ subjects Himself to the same ritual as those who are sinful.

Now you can discern that the Baptism of Christ coming so closely at the heel of Christmas and Epiphany shows that there is a bond between the birth, the visit of the Magi and His public ministry. He will minister to us, not from a distance but in close proximity to us. He is truly Emmanuel, God with us. He became one of us through the incarnation. At His baptism, he confirms that He is committed to our cause and the parting words from heaven declared that His presence will be no less than the very presence of the divine.

Thus, the baptism event marking Christ’s entry into public life has repercussion or consequence for those who are baptised. In the first reading, there is a description of what a true servant is to be like. It is a hymn of the Deutero-Isaiah—the second book of Isaiah. The Jew had been exiled and so on one level, this true servant and later suffering servant applied to the “corporate” person of Israel. But in the context of the New Testament, the true and suffering servant would no longer be the generic corporate figure of Israel but would tangibly be realised in the person of Christ.

We can understand the implication of Christ as suffering servant through the ways baptism has been variously described. Listen to St Paul’s Letter to the Romans 6. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised in Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life”.

St Paul’s description of baptism invites us to consider what our perception of a life with Christ is supposed to be like. For as soon as we follow Christ, then we will have walked in the shadow of His cross—the spectre of death is always real. If anyone believes that life with Christ is hunky dory, he might want to rethink that. Here, I am tempted to say that those who never have to suffer are perhaps not on the road to heaven. Let me pause here for you to consider the gravity of what I have just said: Those who never have to suffer are perhaps not on the road to heaven. It sounds self-righteous but maybe a saying may help us look beyond what I have just said to the meaning of following Christ the Suffering Servant and it goes like this: Faith does not lessen the pain, it makes it bearable.

This ties in with what we are celebrating today: Christ’s baptism, His public ministry and the implication of Him being the suffering servant. His taking on our sins have made our life with Him possible as well as in many cases bearable. For most of us, fed on a diet of easy life, we have come to believe that suffering and dignity have become mutually exclusive. There seem to be no dignity in suffering. Yet, He came to show us what dignity really means. It is to be found in being loved by God. Our dignity does not come others or from others’ estimation of who we are. Therefore, our dignity is not diminished no matter how much we may suffer. Here, let me be clear that there is no glorification of suffering. There is no need to. Maybe I am lamenting that many of us, me included, have not reckoned nor counted the true cost of discipleship. There is no gratuitous glorification of suffering instead I am merely stating the obvious, that in Christ, persecution should not surprise us. Thus, a beloved does not need to lead a shielded life for with Christ near him, what vicissitudes he is faced with can never crush him and will never shatter the confidence of his dignity as a beloved of the Father. From this, let me ask a question. In the recent event over the so-called removal of crucifixes which left many of us disturbed, was it an affront to justice because a human right has been trampled on or did the anger reflect a lack of confidence in our dignity. The answer is, there was an injustice committed but more importantly, the level of anger also reflected the depth of our humiliation. Humiliation is proportional to anger but disproportionate to our dignity. It means that often a person who is not confident of his dignity will feel the greater humiliation. Those who are sensitive, easily slighted, insulted, etc probably will feel the humiliation more acutely.

In summary, the baptism of Christ marks His entry into public life—a change charged by the knowledge of His Father’s love for Him. So, for us who are baptised, it requires that we also embrace our dignity as the beloved of God. If only 20% (ideally 100%) of all baptised seriously embrace their dignity as sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters of Christ, we could become a potent force for the good. Then the public ministry of Christ could really begin in earnest. Otherwise, we will often be reduced to fighting for our dignity because we have been humiliated. So, do you want to be in the 20% or do you choose to remain just in the 80%.

Easter Vigil Year C

I wish tonight could go on forever. You heard me right. A service of 2 or even 3 hours is just too short. But, the reality is that, like all Catholic services, one always keeps an eye on the clock. It is almost barmy to wish for a long service because people will grow restless. Perhaps “restlessness” is the key to understanding why tonight should be a long service. We celebrate the most solemn of Christian feasts. The larger than usual crowd is testimony that we instinctively know this to be so—that this is a solemnity like no other solemnity and that we have to be here somehow. Why?

The reason is a celebration that is out of this world—the resurrection. The gathering of the Elect is tied to the hope of the resurrection. In the Letter of St Paul to the Romans, we discern the strong connexion between baptism and the resurrection. “When we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in His death; in other words, when we were baptised we went into the tomb with Him and joined Him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life”. The basis for baptism is so that we can enjoy the resurrection.

The central proclamation of the Church is the hope of the resurrection. In the Acts of the Apostles, truly a class act, Peter’s preaching or kerygma forms the basis of the apostolic teaching that has come down to us—a kerygma that witnessed to the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

So, how can we appreciate the resurrection 2000 years later? Imagine the 3000-strong Pentecost crowd and as the Acts says, “they were cut to their hearts”. But that is not the end of the story because they asked Peter and the apostles what they must do; just like the Elect asking for baptism. I can imagine how it must have felt like to be there to hear the Apostles’ testimony of their experience of the resurrection of the Lord. The Apostles ate, joked, talked, walked, roughed it out in the open, and finally, after the resurrection, they touched the wounds on His hands and side.

In a sense, they were truly a privileged lot. Would it not be nice to be where they were? It would make what we have here pale in comparison. One almost wishes to be where they were and surely faith would be much easier.

But, is that true? This is plain wishful thinking, just like what we often hear people say: Seeing is believing; seeing makes believing easier. If only we were there, would not faith be easier? In a sense, it might be but being there is no guarantee of faith. If Jesus were to appear today, many of us would have difficulty believing Him to be He. Why? You see, in the matter of belief, probably there are broadly two categories of people. First, the gullible people we read about in the newspapers. For example, the people who believe that paper can turn into US dollars… Gullibility cannot be equated with belief. Believing everything is not necessarily faith. [And the gullibility level of our country has gone up because our education system has gone to hell].

If we are not gullible, then we belong to the second category of people. We believe that Christ will come again but if He were standing here telling us that He is really the Messiah, we would have difficulty believing Him. All you need is someone in the congregation who tells you, “I am the Son of God” and immediately your “cuckoo counter” will start blinking. So, in a sense it must have been harder for Peter and the Apostles. In fact, John 6 is best proof of that. If you want to be where Peter was, preaching to the 3000, you would have to be at John 6 because it had taken a lot for Peter and the Apostles to stay put and not slowly disappear like most of everyone.

So, in the matter of faith, seeing is not always a matter of believing. Instead, faith is an act we have to make, a bridge which only we can cross ourselves. Thus, the Elect tonight should know that for Peter and the Apostles, seeing Jesus was basically that. They know Jesus, they may have many first-hand experiences of Jesus but in the matter of faith, they too had to struggle to come to believe in Him.

Earlier on, I mentioned something about restlessness. We are restless not because the service is long. We are restless because we struggle with the resurrection. We are restless because we fear to live the resurrection. [1]

You see, the best time to celebrate the resurrection is during funerals. Almost every one of us, like Peter and the early Christians, struggles with the resurrection. The two disciples left Jerusalem for Emmaus because they felt let down. Many of us believe in the resurrection but when death assails a person we love, we behave as if this were the only life there is and there is no resurrection. Faith in the resurrection is a vision that can peer beyond the veil of death to see a life awaiting us beyond the here and now.

So, in the end, perhaps “seeing is believing" becomes true when we are able to bear fruit by the way we live our lives. It is when we live our belief in the resurrection that people will be drawn to follow us. The early Christians came to believe Peter and the Apostles because they sense the apostolic faith; believing must bear fruit for others. For so many of us, we need to bear the fruit of our belief so that others can see and sense that we are alive because of the resurrection.

Today we are baptising a small number of people. What a feeble number! Indeed, it is a testimony that our faith is not scintillating enough to draw people to Christ. The resurrection has given us meaning for the next life. But, it has also given us so much more to think about, about how we can make others come to believe in Christ and His resurrection. Elect soon to become Neophytes and all the baptised, we all have our duty all cut out!!

FOOTNOTE:
[1] If the resurrection is of another world, would we not want to be at any of the celebrations that allow us to catch a glimpse of the other world? A good indication of our fear of the resurrection is when we try to solve every problem we have in the world. A world fearful that the resurrection may not be true is one which will seek “certainty” in this world. Of course, younger people are more susceptible to this because they have been fed on the milk that brute strength itself is enough to shape the solution that we are seeking for. Those who live on the edge of life’s winter will perhaps have a more benign view that life is too short to be perfect and that perfection can only be found after the resurrection, as according to St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (3:21) where “He will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of His glorious body” and so aptly echoed in the Eucharistic Prayer III used for funeral: In baptism, he died with Christ: may he also share His resurrection, when Christ will raise our mortal bodies and make them like His own in glory… See brothers and sisters, because of the resurrection, divorce, death, disaster cannot be the final dissertations in this life…

Baptism of the Lord Year B

Sometimes a pithy phrase can mean the world. “You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you”. Firstly, Psalm 2:7 is used for the coronation of the kings from the House of David. This verse in Psalm 2 is echoed in Mark as he points to Jesus as the Royal Messiah—the one anointed by God. Secondly, Isaiah 42:1 refers to the suffering servant who bears the infirmities of many and here, in Mark, Jesus becomes the Suffering Servant in whom God’s favour rests.

Just a voice from heaven at Baptism and Jesus is revealed as the Christ or Messiah and the Suffering Servant. St Paul in the letter to the Romans says, “When we were baptised, we were baptised into the death and resurrection of the Lord”. This means that baptism not only opens for us the gate to salvation—to the other 6 sacraments but baptism also imprints upon us, the very charisms of being the anointed of God and also His suffering servant. Put it in another way, baptism means that the path of Jesus from Calvary to the Resurrection will also become our path. In short, suffering is part and parcel of the resurrection.

Why must suffering be part and parcel of the resurrection? The 2nd Reading puts it rather well: We can be sure that we love God’s children if we love God himself and do what he has commanded us; this is what loving God is—keeping his commandments. If we keep his commandments, we know that there will be a price to be paid because in John 15, Jesus says, “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too”.

We often think of vocation narrowly as vocation to the priestly or religious life. But vocation is more than being a nun or a priest. It is also to be married, to remain single or to be a professional. However, all these are what I would call “secondary” vocations. Our “primary” vocation is that of being called. Baptism is primarily the sacrament of calling because we are called to be sons and daughters of God and brothers and sisters of Christ. It is only in embracing this primary vocation of being called that we begin to express it by becoming a nun, a husband and a father, a wife and a mother, a priest, a teacher, an accountant and etc.

Sometimes we forget that the secondary vocation is the embracing and living out of the primary vocation. What does it mean to embrace this primary vocation? In some countries, the sacrament of baptism has degenerated into a social event. Parents, as a matter of fact, baptise a child because it is the social convention. But if you look at the ritual of baptism, then you begin to understand that it is truly a sacrament which is the foundation of all else. The rite of baptism, properly celebrated takes place at the entrance of the church where the priest welcomes the parents of the child to be baptised and asks two questions. The first question asks the name of the child to be baptised; the name given must not conflict with the faith or recall anything unsavoury. The next question asks the parents what they want for their child. The appropriate answer is “faith”. And during the rite, the parents will be reminded of the faith that they are to hand on to their child. To baptise means that one takes seriously the responsibility of handing on the faith—it is handing on the faith of the Apostles upon which the entire Tradition of the Church rests.

Next week there is going to be a celebration of another sacrament, namely, the sacrament of confirmation. In the Catholic tradition of the Eastern Rite, confirmation is given to infants immediately after their baptism. In the tradition of the Latin Rite, this sacrament is conferred on to teenagers who had been baptised as infants. I am not interested in the theology of the sacrament. However, I want to comment on the “late” age which this sacrament is conferred. It is given that late that it almost becomes a sacrament that somewhat confirms the primary vocation that we have been called to be sons or daughters of God our Father. Whenever we struggle with our vocation in life—be it a husband, an engineer or lawyer etc—apart from the fact that we may have chosen the wrong vocation, often it is because we have not clarified our original intention or we have not fully embraced the reality of our baptism.

Most teenagers go through a phase of rejecting everything that is passed on them (except the money of course). It is a phase of self-determination as if the definition of the self begins when everything is rejected. It is almost as if they want to shout, “I am not everything that you are”. At confirmation, they must decide to accept or reject the faith that their parents have handed to them. Every teenager must make a choice for Christ or not.

Thus, the sacrament of confirmation which some of you will receive next week may be a test of your immersion or baptism into Christ. It is the test of accepting the responsibility and the price of baptism. When we follow Christ, we may lose our family. Those who have gone against their family’s wish when converting may just lose their family. When we follow Christ, we will certainly lose some of our friends. When we follow Christ, we will begin to ask questions: why there is more justice for some people and less justice for others. We will begin to take notice of the less privileged surrounding us. The test of our immersion (because the meaning of baptism is to wash or to immerse) is when we have acquired the heart and mind of Christ.

Some of us fail because we want the benefits of baptism, which is salvation ,without paying the price, which is discipleship. Today, we ask the Lord for the strength to embrace the grace of our baptism as we grow into the heart and the mind of Him who first called us.

Easter Vigil Year A

This is the night, when Christians everywhere washed cleaned of sin and freed from all defilement, are restored to grace and grow together in holiness. It is a line which strikes me profoundly this Easter. A short line from the Exultet we heard expresses the meaning of the Roman Letter of St Paul: “When we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in his death; in other words, when we were baptised we went into the tomb and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life”. This is the night in which this new life has been made possible by the Resurrection of Christ the Lord.

Hence, Easter is not a past event that is just merely of interest to us historically. Baptism means precisely that through the event of Christ’s resurrection, the person baptised is drawn into a new history. This is exactly what St Paul writes in his Letter to the Galatians: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). When a person is baptised, the "I, me, myself", the essential identity of man is changed in such a way that one has become one in Christ (cf. Gal 3:28). A person who is baptised becomes another Christ.

Even though we all gather here to witness to the baptism of a few people, it is important for everyone present here to understand what it really means. [For many of us, this event about to take place, took place for us in time long past]. In baptism, a person who is subjected to the resurrection of Christ is delivered from his or her isolation to become an “I” of a community of believers otherwise known as the Body of Christ. In baptism, we are carried by the mystery of the Resurrection into the mystical Body of Christ in order to live the new life which Christ won for us. The term Body of Christ truly expresses what it means that we live a new life.

For, Jesus says in John’s Gospel: I live and you will live also (Jn 14:19). How? Well, He is alive to us and we are able to live for Him because He sent His Spirit to animate His Body the Church—to animate each and everyone of us. He is alive to us as He continually nourishes us through every single sacrament He gave His Church. He is alive and He meets us at every turn of the Liturgy. He is alive as every event we encounter opens up the possibility of meeting Him.

That is why the Resurrection cannot be an event of the past. In baptism, the sacrament of the Resurrection, the Risen Lord reaches us and seizes us as we in turn grasp hold of Him. And the good news is that He holds us firmly even when our hands grow weak. He keeps us secure even when our courage fails us. Furthermore, as we grasp hold of him, we reach out to hold each other’s hand simply because together we make up the Body of Christ. No one is ever baptised to be alone because when we are baptised, we are grafted into the Body of Christ. It is Christ who draws us into Himself.

The implication of the Resurrection and we becoming taking part in it is tremendous simply because it allows us and gives us hope because of what Christ can do for us. This is important only because the Church, the Body of Christ is made up of fallible and weak members—sinners, if you like. There are some who stay away because they feel that they are not worthy of Christ. They struggle and are discouraged by personal failure and thus, they stay away out of fear. There are some who have stayed away because of their bad experience with weak members of the Body of Christ. Instead of becoming light, we become stumbling blocks—scandals to faith in Christ. For example, if you want to meet unkindness, join the seminary or religious life. The people supposedly closest to Christ can be the most unkind. The point is, we constantly may fall short of the tall order to love but precisely because the Church is Christ’s Body, our hope is not what we can do but what Christ can do for us. We may fail but He will not fail us if we allow the strength of His Resurrection to carry us. In fact, He feeds, heals, strengthens, forgives and SENDS us continually through the ministry of the Church in the sacraments. In short, His Body, the Church cannot fail simply because Christ will not allow it to happen. This is one reason why no one and nothing can ever take away a Christian’s joy that he or she, through baptism has become a member of Christ’s body; that one has been claimed by Christ.

At Easter, we sing full of confidence in Christ who unites heaven and earth in a cosmic event. "Rejoice, heavenly powers... Rejoice, O Earth!" The Resurrection is not merely a historical event but an everlasting event in which Christ “came back from the dead and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, the Father’s Son who lives and reigns forever and ever". Amen!

Baptism of the Lord Year A

Jesus comes up to John the Baptist. There is an awkward moment. John recognises the inequality of the relationship and signals his unworthiness to baptise Jesus but Jesus insists. How can we understand the baptism of The Sinless One? The insistence of Jesus can be understood from the perspective of how firstly, Matthew wants to make the connexion between Judaism and Christianity where he understands the latter to be the fulfilment of the former [1] and secondly, of Jesus’ desire and its consequence on those who are baptised.

From the perspective of continuity and fulfilment, we have the opening of heaven. Imagine in the Old Testament when heaven remained shut and no rain fell upon the earth? Here at the River Jordan, heaven is opened and God re-establishes His relationship with the world. Of course, the Father’s eagerness is a response to the Messiah, his beloved Son.

Second, the Spirit coming down like a dove is sign of a new creation dawning. In Gen 1, the earth was a formless void and there was darkness over the deep and God’s Spirit hovered over the water. Further on in Gen 8, we read that the dove sent out by Noah brought back an olive branch thus signalling a new beginning. (Gen 8:11). With the Spirit coming down like a dove, Matthew reads the history of Israel anew in Jesus. In the baptism of Jesus, a new beginning has dawned upon us. For Matthew, he is reassuring the early Christians that there is greater continuity rather than discontinuity between Christianity and Judaism. For us, the implication of Jesus’ baptism can only be extraordinary for each one of us because we too have been baptised. Let us explore some of the implications.

In Canon Law, baptism is described as the gateway to all the other sacraments (Can 842 §2). It grants us a host of privileges. For example, without baptism, we cannot receive Holy Communion. Once, an un-baptised person was rather annoyed because he was not allowed to receive Holy Communion. He said, “I am a practising Catholic. I believe in what the Church teaches etc”. The answer is simply this: baptism. Baptism initiates a person into a believing community. We are baptised in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That means through Jesus we gain God for our Father and through Jesus we become brothers and sisters to one another. Communion implies just that “communion”. It means that we not only “communicate” with Jesus but the Eucharist expresses the communion we share as brothers and sisters in Christ.

This initiation which baptism achieves is not just a convention we observe. It is not like a community which you join willy-nilly. One day you are happy with the people, you consider yourself as belonging to the community. One day, you fight with this person, then you exclude yourself from the community. It is somewhat analogous to the family. You are born into a family and no matter what happens you remain a member of that family. The same can be said of baptism. Once you are baptised, you become a member of the Christian family no matter what happens after because at baptism, your entire being is changed and you become configured to Christ. In baptism, there is a marking which after it has taken place, cannot be reversed. The consequence of baptism is once baptised you will always be baptised. This explains why for us Catholics, when an Anglican joins us to become a Catholic, he or she is formally received into the Church. We do not “re-baptise” the person. The same too is said of a Christian who for convenience converts to Islam to marry a person. However you may want to see it, the person remains internally configured to Christ.

This is frightening, is it not? In today’s world of freedom, freedom is often translated into self-determination. If I am defined as who I want to be, such an implication can only be frightening. In that case, why should one be baptised, you may ask? And further into this “why should one be baptised” is a subsidiary question: “Should not we wait for a child to grow into maturity before we baptise the child”? [2]

The answer I would give is that the implication or the consequence of privileges is duties... Earlier I mentioned that baptism is gateway to the other sacraments—granting us a host of privileges. If you like, duty is the other side of the coin of privilege. The problem is when we are gung-ho about our rights and privileges, we may forget about our duties. Thus, we need to reconcile our understanding of freedom and duty. Freedom is not the ability to do just anything but rather the freedom to embrace our destiny or our duty. Why? This is because the human spirit is made for a great destiny. It is when we deny the spirit the drive to rise above itself that we kill the human spirit. The understanding of freedom as doing anything that you want is a denial of the human spirit’s destiny for greatness.

Today, Jesus walked into the water not because he had nothing better to do but because he had come to a point in his life where his destiny opens him to embrace the Father’s will. His baptism is a declaration that He intends to live according to His Father’s will in the way that will please His Father. Now you see how enormous the consequence of Jesus’ baptism is for us for it expresses His openness to God’s will. For us, baptism is God’s invitation and our acceptance is salvation. It is a privilege and also a duty to be embraced.

Many people feel unworthy. But let not the fact that we can sin cloud or limit the vision of our calling/vocation/destiny as sons and daughters of the Father, called to greatness. Do you believe it? The crisis we face today is not sin. Ours is a crisis of belief that God can and still does call us. If you don’t believe this, then know that the Devil has clouded your judgement.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Of course, these days it is politically incorrect to look at Christianity as the fulfilment of Judaism.
[2] Baptism of an infant does not violate the infant’s right. A parent routinely chooses for a child or on behalf of a child. Our skewered sense that freedom is self-determination seems to think that in the matter of “religion” a child should have the right to choose. The point is, when your child is sick, you’d never think twice to bring him or her to the hospital. So, our idea of freedom is challenged by our practice. A parent always wants the best for the child. No one sends a child to the worst school in the area. Baptism is a supreme good; life with God. So, why shouldn’t one choose the best?