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The story of the Lord’s Baptism as we hear it today in Saint Luke’s Gospel is told almost in passing: “… and Jesus also had been baptized, and was praying…” Missing is the conversation between Jesus and Saint John the Baptist in which John, surprised by the Lord’s appearance, hesitates and says,” I should be coming to you for Baptism.”
The event of the Lord’s Baptism presents us with an ultimate and difficult paradox concerning the Lord’s vision of His act of Redemption. John’s Baptism was an essentially penitential act. It was a public and external action that expressed an inner change of disposition, and had as its effect the remission of sins.The Gospels all begin with either stories or genealogies that point to Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, yet this Messiah’s first public appearance as such, is as a participant in a communal ritual intended for the remittance and absolution of sins. So, John the Baptist was right: Jesus, incapable of sin, did not need to take part in this ritual. Why, then, did He do it? It wasn’t simply an affirmation of John’s ministry, nor was it simply “making an appearance” the way a Parish Priest might do in attending the school play or basketball game.
What does it mean that Jesus numbered Himself among sinners? There can be no doubt that the purpose of Our Lord’s life was to deal with sin. He became, as we hear in the Eucharistic Prayer, “a man like us in all things but sin.” So, the meaning of His identifying with us sinners is to break down the barriers which sin creates, and which separate us from God.
In our contemporary understanding, Baptism washes away the effect of Original Sin. And what is this effect? Here is a simple example. An infant’s first two words are “Mama” and “Papa.” What is the third word that usually ventures forth from the infant’s mouth? You know it: it’s “No!” This primeval “No!” in the midst of otherwise infantile innocence is Original Sin in its most original manifestation. Baptism provides the Grace to overcome this “No!” in the beginning and ongoing development of conscience.
What Jesus has done in accepting a Baptism He did not need, was to destroy the inevitability of sin, and to reform our Free Will with Grace that provides both prevention and cure. In order to understand how Jesus does this, let’s first make a brief definition of sin beyond the primeval “No!” of Original Sin, that is, the willful choices we call Actual Sin.
Sin has become difficult to define in a therapeutic culture that seeks to eliminate, or at least laugh about “Catholic guilt.” As such we have lost or at least diminished our sense of sin. It may have begun 40 or so years ago with “Transactional analysis” (I’m okay; you’re okay) and grown in a few ways:
— in the objective: dissent (“It’s not a sin.”)
— in the subjective: denial (“I’m not sinning.”)
— in the overstated personal: self-defining (“You have your truth; I have mine.”)
So, amid the present transgender ideology, if a man can say he’s a woman, a sinner can say he’s a saint.
This insensitivity toward sin is addressed in two of the prayers we recite at Mass: the Confiteor and the Agnus Dei. Looking closely at these:
The Confiteor
“I confess to Almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do… through my most grievous fault.” This prayer allows us to make public acclamation that we are sinners in need of forgiveness, not unlike the public penitential act in which Jesus joined the other people before John at the Jordan River.
The Agnus Dei
“Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.” Note that we say “sins,” not “sin” because sin and evil in general are not removed from the world, instead, Jesus dies for and expiates each individual sin that all of us commit.
Both the act and the effect of sin bring about an alienation from God, others and self. Sin creates a self-perpetuating isolation; salvation consists in the restoration of these broken relationships. The initiative in this restoration comes from God through the direct action of Christ, because Jesus has come to transform our lives into the pattern of His own.
We have to understand that Jesus doesn’t just waltz through His life before His Passion. He was burdened by our sin because of His solidarity with sinful humanity. He saves us by sharing our lot as “a man like us in all things but sin,” not primarily by preaching or teaching, as central as these are to His ministry, but by being the God of compassion in our midst.
Unlike our self-absorbed individualism, Our Lord’s self-awareness is always experienced in relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and because of His humanity, He experiences this same self-awareness with all of humanity, sinful though we are. Yet, when He prays, He prays as one of us: His prayer is also ours.
In coming to Baptism, it is as our representative and the bearer of our collective guilt that Jesus seeks forgiveness. When Jesus presents Himself for Baptism, bearing our sins, it was with full awareness of the terrible separation that sin has created between Man and God. Sharing in our humanity, it is as the “New Adam” that Christ enters the Jordan. In Him the whole human race stands before God, confessing our sins. There is no denial of guilt, no avoidance of shame; this is a moment of honest admission of the true state of fallen humanity.
In Saint Luke’s account of this story which we just heard, Jesus is praying. In response to His prayer, several things happen:
the sky is split so that there is no longer any obstacle to communication between heaven and earth
the Spirit descends upon Jesus as the New Adam in the form of a dove, as the Spirit appeared to Noah after the flood, which washed away sin in the Old Testament, establishing a new relationship between God and Man
Jesus is addressed by a Voice from heaven, affirming that He is the Father’s Beloved Son
And so, at this moment, Jesus becomes aware of something that no one else knows: despite human sin, there is no separation between heaven and earth. Nothing, not even sin, will ultimately separate us from the love of God. This being said, however, as long as the consciousness of sin is denied, the graciousness of God’s merciful love will remain undiscovered. To believe that we are without sin is to falsify our relationship with God and to deny the efficacy of Our Lord’s redemptive Passion and Death. It is the awareness of our need for forgiveness that provides us with access to the mercy of God.
At the sacred moment of the Lord’s Baptism it becomes clear to Jesus that the relationship He has always known with the Father has become accessible to everyone, as the Father sees fit. In a typical gesture of humility Christ embraces communion with sinners, and thereby experiences the truth of what Saint John the Evangelist would later write: “Even though our own hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts.” (I John 3:20)
God knows everything about us, and yet His love is undiminished.