Baptism of Jesus and Ordinary Time: Living our Lives Immersed in God

Through our baptism we are invited to live differently

As sons and daughters of the Church, we now carry on the public ministry of Jesus through time into eternity. We are invited on this great Feast to learn how to live our lives immersed in God and reveal the Love of the Trinity to the entire human race.Through our baptism we are "incorporated" into Christ and enter into His "Mystical Body", the Church. We can live immersed in Him for the sake of the world.

P>CHESAPEAKE, VA. (Catholic Online) - Last Sunday in the Western (Latin Rite) Church we remembered the "Manifestation" to the Gentiles, the Feast of the Epiphany. We reflected on the wise men from the East who followed the light to the fullness of Divinity who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.

The word Epiphany means manifestation, a making present, a revealing. There is no doubt that even during what spiritual writers have called the "hidden" years, when we read so little of the life of Jesus "growing up" in Nazareth in the Gospel narratives, the redemptive effects of His Saving life, death, and resurrection were being manifested.

Those years are an Epiphany as well, showing how the ordinary becomes extraordinary when lived in a life of communion with the Father, in the Holy Spirit. The entirety of human development was forever changed and because of that we can live our ordinary lives differently now, by living our lives in Him.

From antiquity, the Christian church has pointed to the Baptism of Jesus in the river of Jordan as the event wherein the plan of God for His Church and the renewal of creation is made manifest. It is not only the beginning of the Lord's public ministry but it is the beginning of the new creation, re-constituted in Him.

With this Feast of the Baptism of Jesus the Christmas liturgical season ends and "ordinary time" in the Liturgical year begins. However, this Feast reveals that the ordinary has now been forever changed in Christ. That includes ordinary people like you and me!

The beloved disciple John wrote in His first letter: "See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure. (1 John 3:1-3)

We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is? How? We shall be "like Him" when we begin to live our "ordinary" daily lives in Him and allow Him to live His Life in us. This process of conversion and transformation begins at our Baptism, when He initiated the relationship, and continues throughout our ordinary life as we cooperate with grace. We continue to grow through our communion with Him in prayer, by hearing and living His Word, receiving the Sacraments and living our life in the Body of Christ, the Church. 

Through our baptism we are "incorporated" into Christ. We enter into His "Mystical Body", the Church. We now live in Him for the sake of the world. In the continuing encounter which is the Christian way of life we become "like Him" for others. We become a "manifestation", an "epiphany" of God in a world stumbling along in the darkness of sin. We live immersed in God.

The word Epiphany is not often used in Eastern Christianity, Orthodox or Catholic. It is replaced by the word "Theophany", which in Greek literally means the "manifestation of God." The Theophany speaks to the vocation of the whole Church and of every Christian to be immersed in God and bring the whole human race and the world along with us.

The Apostle Peter writes in his second letter to the dispersed early Christians that we become "partakers of the divine nature". (2 Peter 1:4) The Baptism of Jesus reveals the Holy Trinity to the world. The heavens open, the voice of the Father speaks to the Son and the Spirit descends! We are invited into a participation in that life of the Trinity beginning now. It began in our Baptism into Jesus Chris and continues by living our lives immersed in Him!

The waters of the Jordan are now sanctified by the Son and become the means of salvation for the whole world. In the first creation, God created the heavens and the earth through the Son. Now, that Son come among us as a man goes down into those waters and re-creates the world.

From antiquity, the Church has found a deeper meaning in this Baptism in the River Jordan. Symbolically, all water is sanctified when God the Son is immersed into it. Just as the Spirit hovered over the waters of the original creation, the Spirit now hovers over these waters when the Son, through whom the entire universe was made, is immersed. (Genesis 1:9/ St. John 1:1-5)

In Eastern Christian Churches, Orthodox and Eastern Catholic, on this Feast the clergy lead the faithful to rivers and bless the waters. Into those waters, through which the people of Israel were once delivered, the entire human race is now invited to follow Jesus in every Baptismal Font, in every Church.

In Christ, all water has now been sanctified. What was once the means of God's judgment at the time of Noah has become the fountain where men and women are delivered from sin and made new! The heavens open at the Baptism of Jesus and the Holy Spirit appears as a sign of the beginning of the new creation. Jesus is the First Born of that New Creation and we are born anew in Him. The Church is the Ark of the New Covenant. 

In the waters of the Jordan, the Trinity, the Communion of Divine persons, in perfect unity, is fully revealed. In the great liturgical prayer of the East the Church proclaims: "When Thou, O Lord was baptized in the Jordan, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest... O Christ our God who has appeared and enlightened the world, Glory to Thee."

In his Baptism in the Jordan, Jesus is not sanctified for He is without sin. He is the Holy One who makes us holy as we choose to enter into communion with God through Him. We become sons (and daughters) in the Son. He descends into the waters of the Jordan River and begins the new creation. We follow Him into those waters as He makes all things new. We entering into communion with Him through our own Baptism.

The waters of Baptism now flow with mercy. The Creator who spoke all of the waters into being through the Son, in Him condescended to take on our humanity and be immersed in the waters of the Jordan! Once, the Spirit hovered over the waters. Now the Word Incarnate descends into Jordan's water making all water holy, to be used to fill the Founts of every Church throughout the world.

In His Baptism Jesus begins the re-creation of the universe. We who are baptized into Him are called to share in this work. The public mission and ministry of Jesus began at the waters of Jordan and continues through His Church.

As sons and daughters of that Church, we now carry on His public ministry through time into eternity. We are invited on this great Feast to learn to live our lives immersed in God and reveal the Love of the Trinity to the entire human race.

This is why the ordinary is now capable of being made holy for the Christian. God became like us so that we can become like Him and live our lives immersed in Him, for the sake of the world. The celebration of the Baptism of Jesus reveals the very heart and meaning of the Christian life and mission.

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