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Live
Letters The Baptism of
the Lord |
The Catholic Telegraph
January 11, 2002The feast of the baptism of the Lord is not an ancient celebration in the calendar of the western church. Originally Jesus’ baptism was celebrated together with the miracle at Cana on January 6th. These two events constituted subsidiary themes to the adoration of the Magi. They were further expressions of the overall theme of the manifestation of Jesus’ divinity and power. A separate observance of Jesus’ baptism was assigned to January 13, the octave day of Epiphany, in 1960. In the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, the celebration of the baptism of the Lord was assigned to the Sunday after January 6th. If Epiphany happens to fall on that Sunday, the baptism of the Lord is celebrated on the following Monday.
The second reading for this celebration in each of the three years of the lectionary’s cycle (unless the optional readings for years B and C are used) is a reading from The Acts of the Apostles. Though large sections of Acts are used each year in the first readings for the Sundays after Easter, this feast is the only time that Acts is used as a source for a Sunday’s second reading. The reason is that this reading from Acts 11 is the only time that Jesus’ baptism is referred to in the New Testament outside the gospels. (Some scholars think that Acts 1.22 is also a reference to the baptism of Jesus by John, but this does not seem to be certain.)
In our reading we find Peter preaching to the Gentile Cornelius and his household. Peter and Cornelius have been brought together by visions from God. Peter now enunciates the basic lesson that God seems to be teaching them: persons of every nation are included in God’s will for salvation.
Peter hastens to observe that God’s project of salvation was proclaimed to the Jews, all over Judea and Galilee, by Jesus. The proclamation started with Jesus’ baptism by John when God identified and equipped Jesus as the Messiah. (This is the significance of Jesus’ being "anointed ... with the Holy Spirit and power.") After that initial manifestation, Jesus engaged in a ministry of healing and exorcism.
Our liturgical reading ends here, but Peter’s speech in Acts goes on to describe how Jesus died and rose from the dead and how the significance and power of Jesus’ ministry has continued to be announced by His apostles.
It would not be incorrect to say that the feast of the baptism of the Lord is the feast of continuity. Its placement at the closure of the Christmas season and at the beginning of Ordinary Time reassures us that the Jesus whose birth we have just celebrated is the same Jesus who preached the saving plan of the Father through His public ministry. Peter’s assurance to Cornelius that "every nation" is "acceptable" to God suggests that we, too, are being addressed by the same Savior who was identified as Messiah by God’s voice as He was being baptized by John in the Jordan.
It’s all of a single piece. It all hangs together. It all constitutes one continuous story: Jesus’ birth, His baptism, His ministry, His death and resurrection, His proclamation by His first followers, His offer of Himself to every nation through the agency of His Church. It’s all part of God’s one project of salvation.
Jesus and His Father are as much concerned about our salvation, here and now, as they were about the salvation of the first Jew and Gentile believers back then. Jesus is Messiah for us as He was for them. The public ministry that began with the baptism of Jesus still continues through the agency of His Church. There is a great, overarching continuity of ministry and mission being exercised by God on our behalf.
But we are not passive recipients in all this. We are also workers in the project. Because each of us shares the one, continuous life of the risen Christ, we also share His mission. We are called, as the apostles were, to be witnesses to His presence, His power, His providence for us. Together with each other, together with Christ, all believers constitute the one body of the Church that is the body of Christ. We, too, like Christ, have been anointed "with the Holy Spirit and power."
Some Christian believers seem to have the impression that only the ordained or only those who engage in formal, professional ministry are responsible for carrying on the mission of Jesus. They think that the rest, the vast majority of the Church’s members, are there to take advantage of what the Church and its ministers offer them, to go shopping in the vast spiritual supermarket into which God has invited them. This is not authentic Christianity. Real faith and real commitment involve continuity with Christ, i.e., consciously being part of the ministry of Jesus, deliberately carrying out the mission to which He was called, sharing in the mission of His Church. The public life of Jesus that began when He was baptized by John still continues - in us.
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Conversation Questions.
Where to I find the ministry of Jesus in my life?
How do I participate in the Church’s continuation of Jesus’ ministry?
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