The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord marks the transition from the Christmas Season back to Ordinary Time. This year, it falls on Sunday, January 11. It’s a feast that commemorates the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry when his cousin, John the Baptist, baptized Jesus.
This can be a bit confusing. We rightly associate Baptism with cleansing from sin. So why would Jesus be baptized? Baptism was not a sacrament before Jesus’ public ministry. Instead, it was a common Jewish practice that expressed repentance from sin, but it did not actually remove sin. Nevertheless, Jesus did not need to repent from sin. So why did he do it?
Jesus was baptized, in part, to identify with John’s movement of repentance. The people who were conscious of their sins and desired to turn away from them were exactly the people Jesus wanted to reach. By entering the Jordan River, he symbolically took their sins upon himself as if he was plunged into the filth they wanted to wash off. But Jesus also wanted to elevate the ritual into something efficacious. By submerging his divinity into the murky waters, he consecrated the waters of Baptism and set an example for us. Now, those of us who have been baptized are baptized into Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Sacramental Baptism brings us into the drama of salvation that has been playing out since the time of the first sin. During this time, water has played an important role. It was from the primordial waters of creation from which life sprang forth. The Lord used water to cleanse the earth and bring about new life at the time of Noah and the Flood. And passing through the waters of the Red Sea, the people of Israel left behind the slavery of Egypt for the freedom of following the Lord. When we are baptized, we are cleansed and freed from sin, and given new life in God’s beloved Son with whom he is well pleased.
The Order of Baptism reminds us of these realities. The candidate for Baptism is first anointed the Oil of the Catechumens as a sign of divine protection and strengthening. They renounce sin and profess the Creed. Water is poured over the head three times invoking the Holy Trinity and pointing to the reality that all sin, inherited and committed, has been washed away and the newly baptized person has been reborn spiritually. When an infant is baptized, the post-baptismal anointing with Sacred Chrism points ahead to the Sacrament of Confirmation.
The white garment with which the newly baptized person is clothed is a sign of Christian dignity as a clean-souled and adopted child of God. The light received from the Paschal Candle represents the light of faith that must be tended to in order to remain alight. It’s also a reminder to the newly baptized to walk as a child of the light. Finally, the Ephphatha Rite prays that the newly baptized person will have ears to hear the Lord and a mouth that professes the faith.
Your Baptism is one of the most consequential events of your entire life. In being baptized into the life of the Lord, you died to a worldly way of life and rose to a new life with the risen Lord. It is your truest birthday, your birth into real spiritual life.
Most of us were baptized as infants and do not remember this remarkable event, and many of us do not get to witness the sacrament often. Consequently, it can be easy to miss just how important this sacrament is. The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is an invitation to ponder this great sacrament. It’s also an invitation to look up your Baptism Anniversary so you can mark the occasion. You can do this by contacting the parish where you were baptized.