January 8th 2023. The Baptism of Our Lord
GOSPEL: Matthew 3, 13-17
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Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel

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GOSPEL: Matthew 3, 13-17
Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John. John tried to dissuade him. ‘It is I who need baptism from you’ he said ‘and yet you come to me!’ But Jesus replied, ‘Leave it like this for the time being; it is fitting that we should, in this way, do all that righteousness demands’. At this, John gave in to him.
As soon as Jesus was baptised he came up from the water, and suddenly the heavens opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming down on him. And a voice spoke from heaven, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on him’.
The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ

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1. Justice would seem to demand that Jesus NOT be baptised, because he is the sinless Lamb of God. But God’s justice is different. His priority is to set right the relationship between himself and us, that we would see that we are his beloved children.
On this feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, which completes the period of Christmas, we read chapter 42 of the prophet Isaiah. The servant of the Lord, we are told, will bring justice to the nations. This contrasts with the Gospel in which John the Baptist says, “I need to be baptized by you,” but Jesus replies to let it be so for the moment so that they can do what justice demands. Surely John was more just to say that he, not Jesus, needed baptism? Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes upon himself the sins of the world. How can it be just that Jesus allows himself to submit to baptism? This is the great surprise. The justice that Isaiah’s servant brings is of a new sort. God’s Son becomes man so that he can put our relationship with God right from within. We are now to live as children of God, live as people who experience the favour of the Father, the love and tenderness of the Father. We do not understand how God can place himself in a line with other sinners to receive baptism. We do not understand how he can offer himself to be crucified. The parameters of justice of this sort are divine, not human. The real injustice for God is that man does not recognize the greatness for which he has been created, that he does not experience the love of the Father that has been destined for him. Jesus knows the love of the Father and can experience the humiliation of baptism, which is a self-emptying, or kenosis as expressed in the Greek of St Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Jesus emptied himself so that we would experience the fulness that God destined for us. 

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2. We seek love in a disordered way, running form one idol to another. But our true greatness, happiness and peace is to be found in the love of the Father. That is why Jesus is baptised! He is emptying himself so that we filled with the fullness of his divine sonship.
Sin is the great injustice. When man sins, he sins above all against his own greatness, his own beauty. We are called to rediscover the beauty of our own baptism, our deepest identity, that which we are before God. Before God, we are beloved children. How often we are flitting here and there, searching for life in a disordered way, the life that the Father has reserved for us in his love. We are called to see ourselves from the perspective of God and live as his precious children. How many idols we pursue! How often we rely on our own capacities and talents as if they gave us the right to exist. God does not look upon us as something to be disregarded or discarded. He looks upon as a marvellous wonder, worthy of sending his beloved Son. This is the justice that must be fulfilled. It is not any old justice but “every” justice. The fulness of justice is love. Man lives in complete righteousness when he lives in love, responding to the love of the Father. On this feast of the baptism of Jesus, may the Holy Spirit make reverberate in us the voice of the Father, that we are loved, blessed, that the Lord rejoices in us. If we do not believe in this love, we end up seeking it in disordered ways. That every righteousness may be fulfilled in us! That we may experience the love, the beauty, the peace, the divine sonship that the Lord destines for us!

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3. Normal “justice” involves making the person pay for his terrible crime. But the justice of God involves enabling that person to be transformed so that he can love again as he should.
For us, when someone commits a great injustice, the normal recourse is to punish him, but for the Lord, real justice involves saving that person. When someone does something very bad, we think that he should be made to pay for it. This can be valid in certain ways, but the real justice is that this person finds the beauty that he has lost. If someone does wrong to us, what is better, that he be made pay for it, or that he return to a state of loving us properly again? This is what God seeks when we sin against him. He wants a conversion of love. He wants us to rediscover our greatness in him, our communion with him and with true life.

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ALTERNATIVE HOMILY
In the Gospel, Jesus asks John to baptize him. This seems strange: Jesus does not need baptism! Then Jesus tells John that this baptism will “fulfil all justice”. What can this possibly mean? Justice is like a weighing scales, right? Offences and punishments being balanced against each other? Wrong! The righteousness of God is not like that! Since the time of the Garden of Eden, we have failed to trust in the loving providence of God. We have believed the serpent’s lie when he told us to do our own thing if we want to be happy. Since then, we have sought to construct our dignity on our own talents and hard work. We yearn for success and acclaim in the eyes of others. We esteem beauty, intelligence, skill. But Jesus comes along to his baptism and turns everything on its head. He tells us that our system of balances, our notion of righteousness, counts for nothing. At the baptism, the Father cries out that his favour rests on his beloved Son. And the Father wishes to say the same to us. Righteousness – being in a correct relationship with God – does not require that we accomplish certain things. Rather, the fundamental thing is to abandon ourselves in trust to the Father, believing that he loves us and esteems us. This is right relationship with God. We construct cages around ourselves and the bars of the cages are made up of notions about image, looks and talents - false ideas about what gives me dignity. Trust in the loving providence of a Father who loves me is the remedy that sets me free.