[1]Perhaps the most
evocative word that Pope Frances has used to present the task of the Church is “door”. The door, says Pope Francis, “must protect,
of course, but not reject”; “the door must not be forced but on the contrary,
one asks permission, because hospitality shines in the freedom of welcoming”; “the
door is frequently opened, in order to see if there is someone waiting outside,
perhaps without the courage nor, perhaps, the strength to knock.”[2] Baptism is a
door that some of us were carried through, as an infant, by loving parents who
desired us to have a relationship with God.
Some of us chose to walk through this door as an adult by the invitation,
encouragement, or witness of a spouse or friend. Either way our baptism becomes a threshold
story in our Catholic Christian walk.
The story of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River is a
threshold story. It’s the doorway that
precedes his forty-day journey into the desert, where he wrestles with
demons. It’s the doorway that initiates
him into a depth journey and marks the beginning of his public ministry. This is the first time we see the adult Jesus
in Matthew’s gospel. He has been
readying himself, but first needs this ritual, in the river of his ancestors,
where the Israelites generations before crossed into the Promised Land.[3]
The Jewish people who asked John to baptize them were doing
something very unusual. Baptism was a ritual
reserved for Gentiles who wished to be received into the Jewish faith; It was a
penitential rite for people who had been believed to be shut out by God and
wished to be accepted by him; Jews would see baptism as unnecessary for
themselves as the chosen people.[4]
Baptism is an act of humility for Jesus, of bowing down to
enter into and become one with the community.
He recognizes how this ritual ushers’ him into a new landscape of
life. Jesus surrenders himself, yields
to John and to the path that is calling him.
He is not resigned, but active in his “yes” to this new path. This kind of assent to a holy call requires
courage, as such, his baptism became a sacred “yes”. In being baptized, he would identify himself
with the people who were renouncing sin and searching for God, and he would set
out on his mission to save them.
What Jesus received from John was not the sacrament of
Christian initiation, although it prefigures our baptism. It was an acceptance of his call to mission,
to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah: “I, the Lord, have called you for the
victory of justice … to open the eyes of the blind, … to bring out prisoners
from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.” (Is
42:6-7)
When you and I were baptized, we to crossed over a threshold,
not only were we adopted into the very life of God, but in our own way we too
were called to mission, to go about doing good, to stand up for justice, to
open the eyes of the blind, and to free people from all kinds of prisons.
Alas, over time, we forget, the newness of our baptism gets
lost because we grew up in an environment not so engaged in our faith
community; or we found ourselves walking through a demanding secular life devoid
of strong Christian witnesses; or we just plain become cynical and jaded by the
seeming hypocrisy of the institutional Church leadership. This is why our traditions and liturgy have
reminders each time we cross the threshold of the church doors. We dip our fingers into the water of the baptismal
font to remind us of our baptismal commitment. We listen to these stories again and again to re-awaken
our call to always begin anew our commitment to be active participants of
Jesus’ mission.
There is a quiet kind of justice happening in the first
reading. The prophet says: “He will not
cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street. …He will not grow faint or be crushed until he
has established justice in the earth.” (Is 42:4) There is a steady patience, a
commitment to continue on doing right even when hope seems feeble. This is who we are as Catholic Christians, the
commitment we are called to, the belief we profess in the Creed, and the “Amen”
we acclaim as we receive our Lord’s very Body and Blood. Believing we will be empowered by the Holy
Spirit to go about doing good courageously in a world full of strife.
Contemplating the baptism of Jesus, how do we remember our
own sharing of those threshold waters, which initiated us into a community and
ushered us toward our own calling? What
have we forgotten, that needs to be reclaimed?
As we cross the threshold into the Ordinary Time of the
Church, may the graces of Christmas spur our re-commitment to live up to Jesus’
call to mission, believing the doors of heaven will be opened to us, after this
our exile, longing to hear the Lord say of us, “This is my beloved son[/my beloved daughter],
with whom I am well pleased.” (Mt 3:17)
