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January 9, 2012
The Baptism of the Lord
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! Also today, in my arms I am carrying my Son Jesus to you, for Him to give you His peace. Pray, little children, and witness so that in every heart, not human but God's peace may prevail, which no one can destroy. It is that peace in the heart which God gives to those whom He loves. By your Baptism you are all, in a special way, called and loved, therefore witness and pray that you may be my extended hands to this world which yearns for God and peace. Thank you for having responded to my call." (December 25, 2011)
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Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. Jesus is baptized by John, to show his identification with us, and to give us an example for our own baptisms. He offers Himself to the Father completely at that moment. He entrusts Himself to His Father, showing us how to do the same. When Jesus emerges from the water, the Father speaks, "You are my beloved son: with you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11). The fruit of our baptism is to become sons and daughters of the Father, like Jesus.
Fr. Jacques Philippe writes about the calls of God in our lives in his book, Called to Life. He speaks of Baptism as one of the two fundamental calls of God that form our identity. I quote below (I probably have shared this before, but it is so helpful. Please bear with me!):
God's Word, transmitted by Scripture, helps us live as the children of God that we are. Discovering this profound identity is imperative, for otherwise we are in danger of adopting false identities unable to withstand the trials that inevitably lie ahead. God's Word, addressed to us by the Father, tells us who and what we truly are.
Two fundamental words constitute our identity. The first word, as we already have seen, is the word of creation that drew us from nothingness into being - God's animating, tender, merciful word, "See, I want you to live!" Creation, however, is not just a past event. It is God's continuing action sustaining us in existence. If God were to stop loving us and thinking of us for even one second, we would return to nothing. We are recipients and interlocutors of this creative word all through our lives.
The second word is the one inscribed upon us at baptism. It extends and deepens the Word of creation by giving us a much fuller life - the life of grace, filial adoption in Christ, participation in the life of the Trinity. We hear it in Scripture, especially on the occasion of Jesus' baptism: "You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased" (Mk 1:11). The same might be said of us, in virtue of our own baptism by which we become children in the Son.
All God's Words support us and invite us fully to welcome the filial life given us in Christ. They contain a gift and a call: the gift of being God's children and the call to grow in openness to the gift by cultivating simplicity, confidence, resignation, acceptance of the divine will, and thanksgiving. The spiritual life is something like a memory game whose objective is to re-establish contact especially with the two grace-filled words that already dwell in us and constitute our identity, in order to make them living and fruitful.
All this has enormous importance today, when many people no longer know to what or to whom they owe their existence. Anguish and insecurity and a sense of emptiness are the result. "Scientific", atheistic culture encourages one to imagine that existence is the product of blind determinism (evolution, the mindless interaction of genes, and so forth) or a more or less haphazard coming-together of a man and a woman who made love without any thought of the new life that might come into existence...
Add to that the impact of being told that earth is only a small planet near an unremarkable star, in a remote corner of one galaxy among billions, and that the difference between humans and animals is not as great as we once thought, and how can anyone feel loved and wanted? The universe could get along without us. Humans are useless products of an impersonal cosmos. If contemporary secular culture makes anything clear, it is this: The rejection of God breeds self-disgust.
The only remedy for this wound to human consciousness is the sense of our filiation, the discovery of our divine parentage. Whatever the circumstances of my conception and birth, my existence itself means that I was wanted, chosen, and loved by an unimaginably tender, pure, unconditional, and generous lover: our creator God. How urgently we need to regain contact with our origins in the creative act of God!
The Word of God offers us this contact. Scripture gives us access to the word already mysteriously inscribed within us: "I said to you: Live!" (Ezek 16:6). (Father Jacques Philippe.Called to Life. Scepter Publishing.2008. p. 49-52)
Today, through Jesus, may we find again our call. As our Lady says to us, "By your Baptism you are all, in a special way, called and loved..."
In Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
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