Happy Feast of the Baptism of the Lord!
Today marks the official conclusion of the liturgical Christmas season, which is always a bit nostalgic because I love Christmas decor and it’s a bummer when things have to come down. From here we will journey through five and a half short weeks of Ordinary Time before gathering on Ash Wednesday and embarking upon Lent. The overall momentum of life picks up pace from that point in mid-February all the way through the celebration of Corpus Christi in early June and the conclusion of the school year. So, the chances are high that sometime before Ash Wednesday, I will pick a week between the Sunday liturgies to take some vacation and reset.
It’s a mark of adulting, I’ve found, that as you grow up your vision moves further and further into the future. In childhood, you spend all your attention simply on the moment in front of you now, whereas in adulthood you spend much of your attention using the moment now to make you ready for the moments yet to come. Go to sleep tonight to have energy for tomorrow. Buy groceries now to eat next week. Go to work this week to pay bills next month. Plan time away now to take vacation next year. It does seem a little strange. But then again, that is a consequence of a fallen world, all the constant preparation. In heaven we won’t spend any time preparing for anything! The fulfillment of all our needs and desires will be eternally present to us in the joy of seeing God’s face.
This whole life that we live, my brothers and sisters, is a time of testing. The trials and efforts of our days are given by God or allowed by Him to prepare us for eternal life. They train our eyes and hearts to have a vision for the future—the ultimate future, the final frontier. Our everlasting flourishing depends on “beginning now with the end in mind,” you might say. Such phrases are made famous even by the experts of our secular day (I’m thinking of a well-known book titled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey).
Today’s gospel is a peek into the human choices of the Son of God who uses the now-moment to prepare for the future He has in mind for us. John the Baptist described his own ministry as a baptism of water signifying repentance. But Jesus’ baptism was not a remission of His own personal sin, for He was already perfect. Rather, as St. Maximus of Turin once preached, “Christ is baptized, not to be made holy by the water, but to make the water holy, and by his cleansing to purify the waters which he touched… For when the Savior is washed, all water for our baptism is made clean, purified at its source for the dispensing of baptismal grace to the people of future ages. Christ is the first to be baptized, then, so that Christians will follow after him with confidence.”
Think of this today and thank God. For in the moment Jesus was descending into the waters of the Jordan, He was seeing into the future and looking with joy at the moment you were baptized with the water He was then currently consecrating for future ages. This water which Jesus sanctified transmits the divine grace that has made you beloved daughters and sons of God.
Fr. Brian