Homily: Sunday, January 9, 2022, The Baptism of the Lord

 How many of you remember your birth date?

How many of you remember your baptism date?

Our birth enters us into earthly life but our baptism marks our soul for eternal life. Baptism sets us aside as the adopted sons and daughters of God. It is the door to other sacraments, entitles us to access all the gifts and graces from God. 

This spiritual mark is indelible, it is permanent for eternity, nothing can remove it, not the devil, and not even our own sins can remove it. 

Amazing, isn’t it? How then, should we remember our date of birth but not the wonderful, important date of our baptism? We should celebrate it every year.

And have you ever thought about this, who should be baptized?

Holy persons? No.

The answer is – sinners. Sinners are the ones who should be baptized. Anyone who thinks he is not a sinner, has no need for baptism. 

In fact, God invites and calls all sinners to come to Him, to be baptized, to be His sons and daughters, to share in the inheritance of eternity with His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

In the second reading, the letter to Titus, it is written, “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.” God does not favor any one better than another. To Him, all are equal, all are sinners, yet all are loved the same.

The Sun rises to shine for everyone, anyone who walks into the sunshine will not be denied its light and warmth, good or evil, rich or poor. But anyone who hides away from it, will not see its light nor receive its warmth.

In the same way, Jesus did not die for some, He died for all. No one who comes to the Lord is denied salvation. Only the one who hides and turns away from God.

At our baptism, we declared our intention to come into the light of Christ, we declared our faith in Him and our rejection of darkness. Do you remember?

Do you renounce satan, all his works, and all his empty promises?

Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?

With these declarations, we become sons and daughters of God. Although we are all sinners and sinful, through baptism, we are marked for holiness and become saint-ful, not saints yet but in-the-making.

Today we celebrate the feast of the baptism of our Lord. Jesus is not a sinner, so why did He go to be baptized by St. John? He does not need it.

This calls to mind the controversial freedom fighter of my home country, the father of India, Mahatma Gandhi. 

His iconic image was baring body and wearing only a simple white loincloth. Why?

He made a deliberate decision to abandon his usual attire of fine dressing when he witnessed the poor people wearing only loincloths doing hard labor all day long because they could not even afford a shirt. 

So, he chose to wear only a loincloth as his daily attire, to identify with them in their poverty and to protest against foreign goods which discriminated against the poor labourers, who were getting poorer under foreign colonisation.

Jesus chose to be baptized by John the Baptist to identify Himself with the poor sinners whom He wants to set free from the slavery of sin. 

He entered this same world, lived in the same poor conditions, submerged into the same water of baptism so that He can show us how we too, can enter God’s kingdom, live under God’s authority and emerge as children of God.

No one has seen God but everyone at the Jordan saw the Holy Spirit in bodily form of a dove and heard the voice of God, declaring the identity of Jesus, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased”.

We may not have a dove descending upon us, but St. John affirmed that “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”, so at baptism, we receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the fullness of life and abundance of graces.

But how many of us can truly live up to the promises we made at baptism?

Soon after the baptism of our Lord, satan tempted Jesus. And satan tempts us the same way too, because we are baptized. He simply wants to destroy anyone who belongs to God. So beware the prideful works of satan, his evil ways and his empty promises of worldly success, material prosperity, lustful pleasures, vain glory.

We may fail, we may fall, we may forget but let us always turn back and try again, to keep our baptismal vows, to walk again into the sunshine, to receive the light and the warmth, God will not deny us.

As Isaiah consoled the Israelites that even in their repeated sins and unfaithfulness, God will “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom…”, we too are assured of God’s unending love and unlimited mercy.

Fulton Sheen said, “As a man must be born before he can begin to lead a physical life, so he must be born to lead a divine life. That birth occurs in the Sacrament of Baptism.”

I am so grateful that I am a baptized Catholic and I remember my baptism date clearly. What about you?

Fr. Nivin Scaria