Homily: Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ

January 12, 2025

My dear brothers and sisters, we celebrate today the feast of the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist at river Jordan. The baptism of Jesus was like the second epiphany where Jesus is revealed to the world as God’s beloved Son. It is with His baptism that Jesus inaugurated His public ministry on earth. Jesus is God, He had no atom of sin whether original or actual, so He needed no baptism. Even John the baptizer found it difficult to understand why Jesus submitted himself for baptism, Jesus answering him said, it is fitting for Him to fulfil all righteousness.

However, as Luke narrated in the gospel reading of today, Jesus was baptized in the company of sinners. From the first day of His public ministry, He started to identify with sinners. He showed from day one that he came to liberate sinners and bring salvation to them. He did not distance Himself from sinners. In this His baptismal episode, the voice of the Father was heard, and the presence of the Holy Spirit was felt affirming His mission as God’s beloved and the Savior of the world. Jesus came that we may have life and have it in abundance, as such we have no reason to be lost.

Recalling the baptism of Jesus and what it meant for Him reminds us of our own baptism and what it means for us. First, it reminds us of who we are, and to whom we belong. With our baptism, we are made children of God, we are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we are tied to the Holy Trinity, we became members of the family of God. We became heirs to the kingdom of God. God is saying to us the same words, you are my beloved Son, you are my beloved daughter with whom I am well pleased. In Ephesians 2:19, St Paul reminds us, “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.” Brothers and sisters, we have to ceaselessly be aware, acknowledge and continuously claim this our belovedness.

With our baptism, we became the beloved of God. We remain at the center of this God’s special love through abiding by our baptismal promises. We remember on our baptismal day, either we or through our parents promised a total rejection of Satan and all his works and we professed our faith in God and obedience to the teachings of the Holy Catholic Church. We are encouraged to continue in the struggle of living this our baptismal status in our thoughts, words and actions. This is what makes us children of God and the beloved in the eyes of God.

The feast of the baptism of Jesus reminds us of the principal function entrusted to the Church by her founder Jesus, the mission mandate of Mt 28:19-20, “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” This is a missionary calling to all of us as children of God. We have the duty to transmit the faith to the ends of the earth. Even our lives seen by others can be an unwritten gospel. At Jesus’ crucifixion, a pagan soldier seeing the way he lived and died for love of humanity said, truly, this is the Son of God. Similarly, the way we live our lives, love and serve others and appreciate divine presence in others can magnet souls for Christ. Can people looking at our lives say-this is indeed a child of God?

The baptism of Jesus inaugurated his public ministry, the feast of the baptism of Jesus begins the Ordinary season of the Church. The liturgical color has changed to the fruitful green color. In this Ordinary season, in the most ordinary things of our lives, doing the dishes, shoveling the snow, going to our work, buying broccoli or tomatoes from Food Basics etc., in them all we are called to be evergreen and bear fruit for Christ. We are called to continue to live out the Christian dignity that we embraced on our baptism.