Plunging into our Baptismal Waters

Dear Friends,

Today we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. Luke, and only Luke, whom we read today, tells us that Jesus is baptized in the midst of a crowd, and after others had been baptized by John.

In a sense, he’s one of the crowd…part of our humanity.

Jesus takes his place with us, with all who stand or wade or swim or seemingly drown in the waters of ordinary life. Jesus joins with us. He is not apart from us – not the only one who receives the baptism of John.

We suffer in varying degrees because the currents of our minds pull us in one direction and our desires pull us in another. Sometimes we feel deluged by the waters of our own mortality, by the threatening chaos of sin, guilt and death.

Jesus takes the plunge into the waters of life with us. He enters today’s COVID-infested waters, where we practice (or don’t practice) our faith. Jesus welcomes us in today’s waters, greets us in the midst of the flood of our life and emerges on the other side with us – victorious.

At Jesus’ baptism, he leaves his former sheltered, hidden way of life and begins his ministry. He asks people to do the same. Jesus urges us to discover what is true about ourselves and face our truth with all its beauty, paradox and difficulty.

Luke also adds that Jesus, after his baptism, prays – opening himself up to the possibilities the Spirit offers, holding himself ready, then, when the Spirit beckons, Jesus gives himself freely and completely to the need at hand.

Jesus becomes the servant described in today’s first reading from Isaiah – God’s chosen, in who God delights. Jesus goes about doing good and curing all who come to him, as we hear in the second reading. None of this is possible without prayer that loves others into life.

If our own baptism, perhaps lost in the distant past, is to be fruitful, we must also pray and enter into the uncharted future with all it takes.

For each of us, the attempt to grow into what Jesus has called us to be involves a life-long struggle. Not without joy. Not without dreams, but in a certain sense we must repeatedly descend into the waters deep within us, in order to hear what the Spirit wishes to speak to us.

With Jesus before us, beside us, behind us and with us, why should we be afraid to plunge into our baptismal waters?

~Sister Joan Sobala