Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

We begin our foray into Ordinary Time with Saint John’s account of Our Lord’s Baptism. This suggests that Ordinary Time is primarily about Baptism — that is — about living our Baptism in our day-to-day life, not just thinking about the Sacrament as vestigial: a once-in-a-lifetime event which took place in our infancy.

So, today we will look at what it means
- to live our Baptism,
- to live a sacramental life, - and -
- to live a life in Christ…
… all of which begin before the water is poured, indeed, before we are born into this world.

There is an astonishing statement in our First Reading: the Prophet Isaiah says, “Now the Lord has spoken, who formed me as His servant from the womb.” This can be considered as one of the greatest pro-life witnesses we could ever hope for, because it recognizes that we, all of whom are called to be the Lord’s servants, belong to Him even before we are born, indeed, from the moment of our conception.

Isaiah’s words recall the experience of St. John the Baptist at the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Elizabeth, where John leapt in his mother’s womb in recognition of the presence of Christ in the Blessed Mother’s womb. Both of these passages suggest that the pre-born child already knows God and has some self-knowledge as a child of God, even if not yet God’s servant.

Here is a story that illustrates this point: Several years ago, a Carmelite Nun told me that she went to visit her niece, who had just given birth to their second child. She arrived the day that Mother and Son came home from hospital, and laid the newborn in his crib. The older brother asked permission to go and see the new baby, whose name was Jeffrey. The parents had installed a listening device in the crib, and chose to listen in on the brothers’ first visit. They were astonished to hear the older brother ask his new sibling, “Baby Jeffrey, what does God look like? I can’t remember.” 

This little story suggests that in the womb we somehow recognize God; it is only in being born into the world that we begin a process of forgetting Him. This “forgetting” could be an effect of Original Sin. Baptism, however, provides a certain “re-membering,” meaning a putting-back-together of body and soul throughout our lifetime. Children tend to be more docile to the Teaching of the Church, more so than adults, whose Baptismal Grace may have worn thin by the time we’ve reached adulthood.

Baptismal Grace, worn thin by sin, perhaps more than by anything else, never disappears entirely, even for those who have rejected God or His Church, and the call of conscience, because this grace enlivens the conscience which is based in a certain pre-natal and preternatural knowledge of God and recognition of the Good, which creates a hunger for God and a desire for the Good.

Saint Paul speaks of this desire for God’s Good when he says that we are all “called to be holy.” In this context, we begin to see holiness as not merely something outside of ourselves to be achieved, but, also as something already inside ourselves to be recognized, realized, and brought forward.

Holiness is the life of the soul brought forward. It generates acts of piety (an internal love for God) and acts of charity (external love for God) both as a means of living God’s life within. God’s perfect holiness illuminates our imperfect holiness and transforms that which is merely human into that which begins to make us godly.

Now, while all of this is lovely to consider, Isaiah takes us a step further: In Isaiah’s prophecy, God now says: “It is too little for you to be my servant; I will make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

Contrary to the contemporary movement toward the privatization of religion, we are meant to draw forward that holiness deep within, and evangelize the world around us, echoing the Baptist’s cry: “Behold the Lamb of God!”

Our words of evangelization, though, must speak to the culture in which we live whose Baptismal Grace has worn so thin, that many people:

- can’t remember what God looks like…
- can’t remember who they really are as sons and daughters of God…
- and whose consciences have been clouded so that they no longer seek for… nor desire that which is of God. 

We, too, will be asked by God to be a light to the nations, especially where our State Legislatures and fellow Voters attempt to lead us away from God’s Will for life and for personal holiness.

Our cry in the desert, building upon the cry of John the Baptist, must be:

- “Behold the Truth of God…”
- “Behold the sanctity of life…”
- “Behold the dignity and the holiness of the human person!”

We will meet strong resistance from what Saint John Paul II named the “Culture of Death,” but we must keep in mind that through us, God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth, even for those who resist the graces of salvation and despise God’s Will.

This is the challenge of God’s Call to Holiness: not only to save our own souls, but to save those who may be unaware of the life of their soul, or who have become so self-determining that life itself loses its meaning… its holiness.

It is for this that Saint Paul tells us that we have been sanctified in Christ Jesus. It is for this that we have been fortified by the Grace of the Sacraments.

And so, lest fear and anxiety concerning our role of 
- growing in holiness
- taking that holiness to the world
- bringing lost souls back to the fold…

overcome us, we have as words of encouragement Saint Paul’s benediction:

“Grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”