The Baptism of the Lord
January 13, 2013
When I think
of baptism. I think of family. Baptism is our entry into the family of the
Church, after all. And baptisms are usually family celebrations, aren’t they! We
all have memories of some of those, I’m sure. Let me share with you a memory of
how an Italian family, dear friends of mine, celebrated the baptism of their
little girl a few years back. The baptism took place in a 1000-year-old church
in a tiny town in Tuscany and it brought together at least 50 family members
from all over Italy. It was a picture-perfect day in early October. The Tuscan
hills were brilliant in shades of gold and green and the sky was the bluest blue
you can imagine. It was a landscape worthy of Van Gogh!
The baptism
itself was great fun, like most baptisms, and this one was especially so because
almost none of the family in attendance had ever seen a baptism by immersion.
There were audible sounds of delight as I took little Elizabeth and plunged her
three times into the water of the stone baptismal font that was festooned with
white flowers.
And I have
another memory of that celebration that will long remain with me. The
church was about a half-mile distant from the little country inn where we were
all staying, and to get to the church, the whole family -- parents and
grandparents, aunts, uncles, and a pack of little cousins dressed in their
Sunday best -- formed a kind of procession (a fairly loose one: this was Italy,
not Germany!) that wound its way over the hillside. At one point, we stopped for
a family photo in front of a lovely little wayside shrine with a statue of the
Madonna and Child. That baptism was, in every sense of the word, a family
affair.
Every baptism
is a family affair, of course! Ours here at St. James are doubly so:
there’s the family, immediate and extended, of the baby being baptized, and
there’s the family of the parish. In the deepest sense of the word, each
one of us becomes ‘family’ as we surround each baby with our love, our prayers,
and our welcome. Baptism is all about family: the family that brings their
new baby to the church with love and great anticipation, and the family of faith
– the Church – that welcomes its newest member with great joy.
The story of
Jesus’ own baptism that we heard from Luke’s gospel today makes it clear that
his baptism was a family affair, too. Luke paints the picture simply and
beautifully. We can see the people lining up at the water’s edge to be
baptized by John the Baptist, their hearts filled with expectation. At the
end of the line is Jesus who steps forward to be baptized after everyone else.
Unlike Matthew and Mark, Luke does not describe the actual baptism but
concentrates instead on what happened immediately afterwards. He tells us
that after Jesus had been baptized he was praying (Luke loves to talk about
Jesus praying), and it was while he was praying that his baptism became a family
affair. The heavens opened up, we are told, and the Holy Spirit descended
upon him in the form of a dove, and his Father’s voice was heard from heaven,
“You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased.” A family
affair it most certainly was for we must remember whose family Jesus belonged
to: the family of the Trinity -- Jesus, the Father’s only-begotten Son; Jesus
the one in whom the Holy Spirit lived and breathed as in no other.
My friends,
this feast of the Baptism of the Lord is meant not only to remember and
celebrate the baptism of Jesus but also to awaken us to our own baptism – not so
much to the day it happened (many of us, maybe most of us, have no memory of
that whatever). No, we are to awaken not so much to the day of our baptism
as to the reality of our baptism. For on that day we became part of a
great family, the family of faith, the Church. And every day since, God has been
breathing into us the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and joy and
peace, the same Spirit that lives in Jesus and gives us a family resemblance to
Jesus. And every day since, the Father has been looking upon us fondly and
speaking words like those that he spoke at the baptism of Jesus: You are my
beloved son, my beloved daughter, in you I am well pleased!
Dear friends,
two Sundays ago we celebrated the feast of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and
Joseph. Today we celebrate the feast of the Baptism. But I will always
think of this as a second feast of the Holy Family -- our holy family, the
family that we are, thanks to our baptism: the family of God, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, the family of the Church. Baptism really is a family affair!
Father Michael G. Ryan
