Baptism of Jesus

With the Baptism of Jesus, Christmas time comes to an end. It is a pity because we love Christmas and we have to wait for another year; but we are beginning a new year, with all the excitement that this brings about. Today Jesus begins his public life, a life where he manifests his divinity and gives us the good news of the Gospel. And he starts in the same way we begin our Christian life: washing away with water our original sin.

Jesus is God, sinless; he didn’t need to be baptised, but he wanted to go through John’s baptism, to purify the waters and give them the power to cleanse us. John the Baptist didn’t want to baptise him; he wanted to be baptised by Jesus and we understand him. They almost had a fight, but John was sympathetic to Jesus’ request. The early Church was a bit ashamed of this baptism, finding difficult to understand it, because Baptism is meant for the salvation of sinners. Eventually they realised that Jesus, like in his death on the Cross, took with him on his shoulders all our sins, our iniquities, our infidelities, and buried them in the waters of the Jordan River. In the same way the waters of a river wash down everything in its path, the same happens to us when we are baptised.

Do you remember your Baptism? Most of us were baptised when we were babies and we don’t remember anything. Some of you maybe have videos of the moment and maybe you can see yourself crying because the water was too cold and you were sleeping peacefully beforehand. But it is a good moment today to think about what happened to us at that moment. If we could see the change in the soul of the baby, the moment the water is poured onto his head, we would be amazed and greatly surprised. It is an automatic transformation, from a soul closed to any grace from a God, pitch black, surrounded by darkness, to a completely clean surface, full of light and shining, everything bright and white. Suddenly the sky is open and God appears like the sun in all it’s splendour, telling us that we are his children, taking us into his strong arms. Almost similar to what happened during the Baptism of Jesus, when the heavens opened and the voice from above declared: “This is my beloved son.”

We are baptised in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Today we have the great manifestation of the Holy Trinity. We see in action the workings of the three divine persons, fully present. The Father represented in the voice, Jesus, the Son being baptised, and the dove, the Holy Spirit. It is the first time in the New Testament, that we have a graphic image of them, acting before our senses in an exterior manner. It is a good representation of what happens to our soul when we are baptised, when we are in a state of grace, when we share friendship with God, that the whole Trinity comes to our soul and abides in us.

Baptism means to immerse. Today we can have our immersion, we can plunge ourselves into the immensity of God. We can die a bit to ourselves, to become a new creature, ready for this new year which begins for us, full of hope and promises. We come out of the water like the Phoenix, renewed and transformed. In the same way the water of the River Jordan touched Jesus’ skin, today we allow Jesus’ grace to touch our soul, washing away all our imperfections.

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