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
