Christmas Weekday

Today's Mass Readings

We are still celebrating the joy of Christmas until the feast of the Lord’s Baptism this Sunday. I admit that I, for one, have often not thought much at all about Jesus’ baptism except to think of it as an historical event in Jesus’ life. Yet of course, there is much more reflection that can be done, especially while we are still in the season of Christmas. We began Christmas by recognizing the great joy of Mary, Joseph, the angels and the shepherds at the fact that God had become human, one of us. But very quickly, the daily readings turned us toward the fact that God becoming human didn’t mean that all of our cares had gone away. When God came to earth, every thing in the world was NOT hunky dory. Rather it meant that we now had a new task, that of witnessing to Christ even in the face of very difficult times. Our observation of Saint Stephen’s martyrdom was the day just after Christmas Day, for example, and in his martyrdom we read about the great costs that can come with being a disciple.

Today we see a kind of culmination of all these scriptural directives to go out and be disciples – because it is not Jesus’ baptism that is really the point here, but our OWN. Baptism makes us Jesus’ own, and it always calls us to be better and better witnesses of Christ.

The First Letter of John (5:5-13) speaks very poignantly about how the people who will be victors over the world are people who have “the Spirit, the water, and the Blood.” This passage may seem a bit cryptic, but being victors over the world suggests (especially if you’ve been reading the rest of John’s letter in the daily readings) that we are able to see light even in the darkest places of the world. We are able to prevail against the ugliness and evil that is often apparent. The Blood mentioned in this verse is referred to earlier in the passage as Jesus Christ. The suggestion is that if we believe in the salvation we have through Jesus’ death on a cross, we have moved toward being a victor over the world. Yet belief is not quite enough. The passage also mentions that we need both Spirit and water, which point us directly to the necessity of our own baptisms.

On the day of our baptisms, we were washed with some water, and we were anointed with the Holy Spirit through the Oil of Chrismation. (If you aren’t familiar with the baptism rite, or especially if your baptism was done when you were an infant, next time you see a baptism pay very close attention to the prayers the priest speaks over the water and during the anointing. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all there in the prayer!)

The use of water and oil in baptism are important, partly because Jesus himself was baptized in water, and partly because these elements are meant to demonstrate to us that God works on us through real, tangible things. Just like God came to us in human form, God is still present to us in the tangible, real things of the world. We have the possibility of meeting God in our own environment. This is so important, because it reminds us that we do not have to try to be lofty (for we will fail) but that God is always seeking to meet us where we are, even as we are living our baptisms to be witnesses for God.

Today’s Gospel reading (Luke 5:12-16) should also remind us of our baptisms because it mentions Jesus making a blind man clean. Baptism makes us clean – it cleanses us from our sin so that we have a new (and better) relationship with God than before. And so, baptism allows us, in many ways, to become disciples of Jesus Christ.

Let us pause today to reflect on our own baptisms, and to ponder what God might be calling us to do because of our baptisms.

-- Jana Bennett