January 10th 2020.  Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord

Gospel: Mark 1:7-11

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL Mark 1:7-11

In the course of his preaching John the Baptist said, ‘Someone is following me, someone who is more powerful than I am, and I am not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.’

It was at this time that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised in the Jordan by John. No sooner had he come up out of the water than he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.’

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

SHORT HOMILY . . . The first reading tells us to leave aside our own ways, to stop spending resources on things that do not satisfy. We must change paths so that the Lord can bring to fruition his design of love for each one of us. In the Gospel, when we contemplate Jesus’ baptism, it is clear that we are also contemplating our own. John’s form of baptism recalls various rites of purification that were already familiar in Israel: immersion in obedience to God, the cleansing of that which defiles, etc.. But the baptism of Jesus brings something new that was not present before, the secret of immersion in the Holy Spirit. The heavens are thrown open. Normally, there is an abyss between us and the place where God resides. If heaven is impenetrable, then our lives are just horizontal, struggling miserably here below, with the added frustration of being called to eternity! With Jesus, though, heaven and earth are united. Our baptism reveals the nearness of God the Father to us through the gift of his Holy Spirit. 

The descent of the dove recalls the moment when Noah discovers that the flood waters are receding, that the time of death is over and the time of new life through water has begun, that we can live in peace and fullness. We must trust in the Holy Spirit, not in our own efforts and enterprises! These works have dignity up to a point, but if the heavens are not open, then our work is purely horizontal and will come to an end. 

The Father says, “You are my Son the beloved. My favour rests on you”. This voice of the Father is the voice that speaks to all of us in our baptism! These words are the fulfilment of the promises of the Old Testament, that our hearts will be transformed from being solitary and isolated, fending for themselves.  Our hearts will become the hearts of children who are beloved, hearts of people who know the Lord has tender love for them. 

Everything that Christ will do on earth from this moment forward is done in the context of these words from the Father. He acts, not because he is strong, heroic or intelligent, but because he is Son. Later in Mark’s Gospel, the centurion will see him die and exclaim, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!” The Father’s words at the baptism find their fulfilment in the cross and resurrection. And if this is Christ’s baptismal truth, it is also our baptismal truth. Just as this voice reveals the identity of Christ, so our baptism reveals the fundamental element of our identity: that we are loved by God as we are.

LONGER HOMILY NOW FOLLOWS

God has something good to give us, but we are reluctant to accept it because acceptance involves rejecting our own ways

We celebrate the feast of the Baptism of Jesus with the brief and evocative account from St Mark’s Gospel. The first reading is from the 55th Chapter of Isaiah, the last part of what is sometimes called the “Second Isaiah”. Whether a second Isaiah existed or not, this passage is incredibly beautiful. It tells of people who are thirsty and are invited to come for water and food. All of this bounty is for free, and the people are scolded for spending money on that which cannot satisfy. The point is that we must open ourselves to the bounty which the Lord wishes to present to us gratuitously. And it highlights a problem: why are we so reluctant to accept the generosity of God? Because we refuse to turn away from our habitual patterns of behaviour! “The wicked man does not abandon his ways, nor the evil man his thoughts. But my ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.” We do not appreciate this chasm between God’s ways and ours, and we conceive of God in terms of our own schemes, our own categories of behaviour.

Do we think that our ways of living, our patterns of behaviour, are compatible with God? Think again!

When a person has arrived at a stage of crisis in his life, the correct response is not to present him with a ready-made answer. He must first learn to question and contest his old ways of doing things. Similarly, when a married couple is having difficulties, it is not sufficient to present them with a solution. They will mismanage that solution with the same efficiency that they mismanaged their marriage. The first thing they must do is listen and learn to change their whole approach to things, their way of dealing with life on a daily basis. The Lord asks us to listen to him and to be open to his ways, to his thoughts that are so different to ours. It is our entire internal setup that needs to be radically altered. This cannot be achieved by studying theology, or by memorizing the entire catechism. All such study leaves our basic framework of life unaltered. We need to move out of our usual mode of existence, our solitary dysfunctional way of carrying on. If we undertake a regime for losing weight, we must be willing to change our eating habits. If we wish to follow God, we must radically change our everyday mode of behaviour.

How do we learn God’s ways? Jesus crosses the gap between God and us and initiates a life of communion with us. If we wish to live in God’s ways then we must live in communion with Jesus

In the Gospel, Jesus reveals the work of God and initiates this new way of being human that was spoken of in Isaiah 55. It begins with baptism, an act of purification. Jesus does not have need of purification, but he enters into the rite out of love for us. He takes us by the hand and teaches us the way. He comes to us as we are, queuing up before John with all the sinners. In so doing, he shows us the new posture that we need to adopt. As soon as Jesus enters the water, John see the heavens split open and the Spirit descend upon Jesus. The opening of the heavens represents the victory of God over the intermediary “gap” that exists between us and the Lord. Anthropomorphically, we locate God in the skies. St Paul refers to the power of evil that prevails in the air above us, because Hebrew cosmology locates Satan in the zone between us and God. Satan is the one who impedes us from going to God and gets in the way of God’s coming to us. God is impeded from coming down because I am under the influence of the tempter and do not listen to the Lord. But in Jesus the heavens are torn open and the gap that existed between us and God is eliminated. His ways can now become our ways, if we allow them to; his thoughts can enter into me; the Holy Spirit can descend into my heart! The new life I lead is no longer according to my own schemes because, finally, between me and God there is no longer a separation. In other words, the new life we are speaking about is none other than communion with God.

Satan wishes us to believe that God cannot love us because we are unworthy. But Jesus shows us that each one of us is a beloved child of the Lord

The new life that initiates with the purification in water - the new life that comes from baptism - culminates in the cry from God, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased!” This cry from the Lord is also directed towards each one of us individually. The splitting open of the heavens represents the defeat of the belief that we cannot reach God, that God cannot come down to us. It is fundamentally a Satanic idea to believe that God cannot love us because we are unworthy of him, that we are too dirty or undignified for him. This idea leads us to the proud and disordered search for a false identity by means of the things that we do and the things that we possess. When the Holy Spirit descends on us in baptism, a voice penetrates to our very interior. “You are my beloved child. In you I am well pleased!” Each one of us is a source of happiness for the Lord, but what is it that impedes us from believing it? Our pretences regarding ourselves. God knows how we are made. He know our weaknesses. In Christ he takes us by the hand and teaches us how much he loves us, and that we are all his beloved children.