Monday,
January 9, 2017
FEAST OF THE
BAPTISM OF THE LORD
“We Are sons
and daughters In The Son” —Filii In Filio
Appreciating
Christ’s Baptism as Revelation, ours as Transformation.
Inventory
How would you
answer now the basic question of life: “Who is Jesus Christ for you?” How would
you answer the second question: “Who are you?”
Does the answer
to the first question give you the answer to the second?
Input
The Entrance Antiphon shows God the Father
introducing Jesus to the world: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am
well pleased.”
In the Opening Prayer we claim the same
identity for ourselves, with this difference: we are children of God, not by
nature, but by a special kind of “adoption” that is not just legal adoption,
but the grace, the “favor,” of actually sharing in the divine life of Christ.
Therefore, for us it is not “natural” but “supernatural” to act on the level of
God. We can, but only if we choose to act by the Spirit given to us. So we pray
that the Father will always be well pleased” with us by keeping us “faithful to
our calling.”
In the Alternate Opening Prayer we ask for this again. We ask that we who
are like Jesus by sharing his humanity might be reformed interiorly —
re-shaped, re-structured in mind and will and heart by reflection on his words
— so that our actions will show us to be like him in sharing his divinity.
In the Prayer over the Gifts, as we present the
bread and wine to be placed on the altar as symbols of ourselves, we
acknowledge that we can only live on Christ’s divine level by “becoming one
with him” in the sacrifice he made on the cross. We are divine because we died
in Christ by Baptism and rose with him out of the waters of Baptism with a new
identity as sons and daughters of the Father “in Christ” the Son. We “present
our bodies” again under the symbols of the bread and wine as a pledge that we
will try to live out the mystery by which we “became Christ.”[1]
In the Prayer after Communion we ask the Father
that “by listening to your Son with
faith” we might “become your children in name and in fact” — that is, in
action. For this we need to nourish our divine life with the “bread of heaven,”
which the Church understands to mean both the word of God and the body of
Christ received in Eucharist. Both are offered to us in the Mass.
Sent with News
In Matthew 3:13-17 we
see Jesus introduced to the world by the Father’s voice and the Spirit’s
descent. In the Preface for the feast
of the Baptism of the Lord we say to the Father: “Your Spirit was seen as a
dove revealing Jesus as your servant.”
We who “become
Christ” by Baptism need to be identified, introduced to the world in the same
way. It is not enough that the Father, speaking through the Church, claims us
as his children and that Jesus gives us his name as Christians. It also has to
be visible to others that God is “anointing us” with his Spirit to do for the
world what Jesus came to do. We, as Christ’s body on earth, are “sent to bring
to the poor the good news of salvation.” All of us.
Pope Paul VI
said the Church “exists to evangelize.” That means you and I exist to
evangelize. We are the Church. If we are not evangelizing, we are not being
“faithful to our calling.” We are not living up to our identity. We are not
being authentically what we are.
This calls us
to discipleship — not to just
“following Jesus,” which is what people commonly assume it means to be a
“disciple.” A disciple is a “student.” If we are not committed students of the
mind and heart of Christ as revealed in his words, we are simply not disciples.
And we are not equipped to evangelize.
When the Father
introduced Jesus as his “beloved Son” the second time — when Jesus was
transfigured on the mountain — Matthew, Mark and Luke all say he added the
words, “Listen to him.” The point is pretty clear: If we have been properly
introduced to Jesus, we will be listening to him; that is, to his words. In
this age of literacy, to “listen” includes to read. So if we are listening, we are reading Scripture. If we are
not reading Scripture we are not listening. And if we are not listening, we do
not know Jesus Christ.[2]
Strong words.
In the Second Vatican Council the Church made them her own by quoting St.
Jerome: “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” If we are
ignorant of Christ, we have not heard the Good News. And so the Church “earnestly and specifically urges all the Christian faithful... to learn
by frequent reading of the divine Scripture the surpassing value of knowing Jesus
Christ.” Until we do we cannot evangelize others, because we have not been
evangelized ourselves. [3]
Is it any
wonder that four of the last popes have called for a “new evangelization”? We
know what is wrong. We know why Christians are not having as much effect on the
world as we should have. We just need to do something about it.
Some Christians
are transforming the world. We have an impressive number of modern saints,
heroes and martyrs who are “bringing to the poor the good news of salvation.”
Many of them are rich themselves, but are sharing their time, talents and
resources with others in need. The question is, what have you done to spread the Good News? What are you doing? What will you
do?
And what are
you doing to prepare yourself?
Servant and Spirit
Isaiah 42: 1-7 makes the call
to “be Christ” about as inspiring as it gets. He describes first what the
Messiah will be; then how he is going to fulfill his mission, then what that
mission is.
The Messiah,
God says, “is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I
have put my spirit upon him.” Wouldn’t you like God to say this of you? Then be
the “messiah of the Messiah,” anointed in Baptism to let Jesus continue his
saving work in you.
The Messiah
will do his work gently, with patience and compassion for people: “not crying
out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street. A bruised reed he
will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench.” Jesus will work with
whatever we give him to work with. He rejects no one. Are you still afraid to
volunteer?
Jesus’ mission
was and is to “bring forth justice to the nations,” not through worldly power
and force, but through the persuasive power of truth and the irresistible force
of love. He came to be “a light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out... from the prison those who live in
darkness.” There are no prison walls so confining as the “box” of cultural
conditioning. Unless Jesus frees us to think “out of the box” by faith, we will
“sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” with no one to “guide our feet
into the way of peace.”[4]
A good example
of confining cultural conditioning is “Relativism,” which Benedict XVI has
identified as the “central problem for faith today” because it is a
“self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable.” It is “ultimately based on a rationalism which declares that
reason... is incapable of metaphysical knowledge.” It is a despairing
“resignation before the immensity of the truth” that keeps human beings from
aspiring to become anything more than highly skilled, effective technologists.
Those who have subjected themselves to the “dictatorship of relativism” are
imprisoned in the darkness of “Lucifer,” mendacious “bearer of light.” Jesus,
on the other hand, is “the true light, which enlightens everyone.”
All
things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into
being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of
all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome
it.
Jesus invites
us to enter into that light by becoming his disciples.
It we do, the Responsorial (Psalm 29) tells us, “The Lord will bless his people with peace.”
The “Good News of Peace”:
In Acts 10:34-38 Peter announces this
blessing to the Gentiles assembled in the house of the Roman centurion,
Cornelius. He delivers to them “the message of ‘the Good News of peace’
proclaimed through Jesus Christ who is Lord of all.”
Christians
can offer this message of peace to the world. And we are charged to do so.
First we need to experience it in our hearts through reflection on God’s words.
Then we need to express it in our lives. And through this we need to give it to
others. The Church ”wants the whole world to hear the summons to salvation, so
that through hearing it may believe, through belief it may hope, through hope
it may come to love.” And through love “The
Lord will bless his people with peace” (see Vatican II, “On Divine
Revelation,” no. 1).
Insight
Now
who do you say that Jesus is? And who are you?
Initiative:
Read
Scripture. Live what you read. Share what you experience.
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