The Baptism of the Lord, 01-13-08

The Manifestation of Newness of Life

Scripture Readings
First: Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7
Second: Acts 10:34-38
Gospel: Mt 3:13-17

Prepared by: Fr. Jonathan Kalisch, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• The newness of life offered through Baptism - the signification of the Yeses and Nos and the
coming of the Kingdom of God preached by the suffering Servant: Yes to the God of life, the
family, responsible love, solidarity and justice, and truth.
• Jesus’ identification with man reveals to those who suffer because their lives are diminished
– that God is no longer inaccessible – but searches for us and brings us to the light.
• In taking on our sins, Jesus comes not as an outsider but one who desires to redeem our
whole nature.

2. Exegetical Notes
• Though sinless, Jesus accepts John’s baptism as part of God’s design (Lk 7:29-30), to
satisfy the saving righteousness of God, in fulfilling and perfecting the old law (Mt 5:17, 20).
• Mt 3:16 – Recall that the Spirit also hovered over the waters at the first creation (Gen 1:2).
The Spirit now anoints Jesus for his Messianic mission (Act 10:38) which it guides (Mt 4:1; Lk
4:14, 18; 10:21; Mt 12:18, 28). It also sanctifies the water preparing the way for Christian
baptism (Ac 1:5).
• Mt 3:17 – this is my beloved son: Love is expressed in this saying that hearkens to Is 42,
identifying Jesus as the Servant of the Lord. Jesus is not manifested as the royal,
conquering Messiah, but as the Suffering Servant.

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• # 438: Jesus' messianic consecration reveals his divine mission, "for the name ‘Christ'
implies ‘he who anointed,' ‘he who was anointed' and ‘the very anointing with which he was
 anointed.' The one who anointed is the Father, the one who was anointed is the Son, and he
was anointed with the Spirit who is the anointing." His eternal messianic consecration was
revealed during the time of his earthly life at the moment of his baptism by John, when "God
anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power," "that he might be revealed
to Israel” as its Messiah. His works and words will manifest him as "the Holy One of God.
• #713: The Messiah's characteristics are revealed above all in the "Servant songs." These
songs proclaim the meaning of Jesus' Passion and show how he will pour out the Holy Spirit
to give life to the many: not as an outsider, but by embracing our "form as slave." Taking our
death upon himself, he can communicate to us his own Spirit of life.
• #715: The prophetic texts that directly concern the sending of the Holy Spirit are oracles by
which God speaks to the heart of his people in the language of the promise, with the accents
of "love and fidelity." St. Peter will proclaim their fulfillment on the morning of Pentecost.
According to these promises, at the "end time" the Lord's Spirit will renew the hearts of men,
engraving a new law in them. He will gather and reconcile the scattered and divided peoples;
he will transform the first creation, and God will dwell there with men in peace.
• #716: The People of the "poor"—those who, humble and meek, rely solely on their God's
mysterious plans, who await the justice, not of men but of the Messiah—are in the end the
great achievement of the Holy Spirit's hidden mission during the time of the promises that
prepare for Christ's coming. It is this quality of heart, purified and enlightened by the Spirit,
which is expressed in the Psalms. In these poor, the Spirit is making ready "a people
prepared for the Lord."
• #719: John … proclaims the imminence of the consolation of Israel; he is the "voice" of the
Consoler who is coming. As the Spirit of truth will also do, John "came to bear witness to the
light." In John's sight, the Spirit thus brings to completion the careful search of the prophets
and fulfills the longing of the angels. "He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain,
this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and have borne witness that this
is the Son of God. . . . Behold, the Lamb of God."
• #608: After agreeing to baptize him along with the sinners, John the Baptist looked at Jesus
and pointed him out as the "Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." By doing so,
he reveals that Jesus is at the same time the suffering Servant who silently allows himself to
be led to the slaughter and who bears the sin of the multitudes, and also the Paschal Lamb,
the symbol of Israel's redemption at the first Passover. Christ's whole life expresses his
mission: "to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."
• #537: Through Baptism the Christian is sacramentally assimilated to Jesus, who in his own
baptism anticipates his death and resurrection. The Christian must enter into this mystery of
humble self-abasement and repentance, go down into the water with Jesus in order to rise
with him, be reborn of water and the Spirit so as to become the Father's beloved son in the
Son and "walk in newness of life": Let us be buried with Christ by Baptism to rise with him; let
us go down with him to be raised with him; and let us rise with him to be glorified with him.
Everything that happened to Christ lets us know that, after the bath of water, the Holy Spirit
swoops down upon us from high heaven and that, adopted by the Father's voice, we become
sons of God.
4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities
• Chrysostom: For, because the baptism was “of repentance,” and led men to accuse
themselves for their offenses, lest any one should suppose that He too “cometh to Jordan” in
this sort of mind, John sets it right beforehand, by calling Him both Lamb, and Redeemer
from all the sin that is in the world. Since He that was able to take away the sins of the whole
race of men, much more was He Himself without sin. For this cause then he said not,
“Behold, He that is without sin,” but what was much more, He “that beareth the sin of the
world,” in order that together with this truth thou mightest receive that other with all
assurance, and having received it mightest perceive, that in the conduct of some further
economy He cometh to the baptism.
• Remig: The Persons are described in the words, "came Jesus to John;" that is, God to man,
the Lord to His servant, the King to His soldier, the Light to the lamp. The Place, "from
Galilee to Jordan." Galilee means 'transmigration.' Whoso then will be baptized, must pass
from vice to virtue, and humble himself in coming to baptism, for Jordan means, 'descent.'
• Jerome: The mystery of the Trinity is shown in this baptism. The Lord is baptized; the Spirit
descends in the shape of a dove; the voice of the Father is heard giving testimony to the
Son.
• Thomas Aquinas: This mode of manifestation applies in different ways to the Son and to the
Holy Ghost. For it belongs to the Holy Ghost, Who proceeds as Love, to be the gift of
sanctification; to the Son as the principle of the Holy Ghost, it belongs to the author of this
sanctification. Thus the Son has been sent visibly as the author of sanctification; the Holy
Ghost as the sign of sanctification.
• Thomas Aquinas: The Father is manifested by the voice, only as producing the voice or
speaking by it. And since it is proper to the Father to produce the Word---that is, to utter or to
speak---therefore was it most becoming that the Father should be manifested by a voice,
because the voice designates the word. Wherefore the very voice to which the Father gave
utterance bore witness to the Sonship of the Word. And just as the form of the dove, in which
the Holy Ghost was made manifest, is not the Nature of the Holy Ghost, nor is the form of
man in which the Son Himself was manifested, the very Nature of the Son of God, so neither
does the voice belong to the Nature of the Word or of the Father who spoke.
• Evangelium Vitae: The experience of the people of the Covenant is renewed in the
experience of all the "poor" who meet Jesus of Nazareth. Just as God who "loves the living"
had reassured Israel in the midst of danger, so now the Son of God proclaims to all who feel
threatened and hindered that their lives too are a good to which the Father's love gives
meaning and value…With these words of the Prophet Isaiah (35:5-6, 61:1), Jesus sets forth
the meaning of his own mission: all who suffer because their lives are in some way
"diminished" thus hear from him the "good news" of God's concern for them, and they know
for certain that their lives too are a gift carefully guarded in the hands of the Father (cf. Mt
6,25-34).
5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars
• Bl Kateri Tekakwitha, was a Native American whose Christian mother educated her in the
faith as a small child. Kateri secretly adhered to these teachings, longing to be baptized, and
received instructions whenever visiting missionaries came to her village. Despite much
opposition from her family and tribe, Kateri was baptized at 20, and devoted the rest of her
life to spiritual and corporeal works, being especially attentive in devotion to the Eucharist
and the cross. Her dying words were “Jesus, I love you.”
• Before a baptism in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Benedict XVI reminded those gathered of the
exemplar of the early saints and baptism: “In the ancient Church these "noes" were summed
up in a phrase that was easy to understand for the people of that time: they renounced, they
said, the "pompa diabuli", that is, the promise of life in abundance, of that apparent life that
seemed to come from the pagan world, from its permissiveness, from its way of living as one
pleased. It was therefore "no" to a culture of what seemed to be an abundance of life, to what
in fact was an "anticulture" of death. It was "no" to those spectacles in which death, cruelty
and violence had become an entertainment. Let us remember what was organized at the
Colosseum or here, in Nero's gardens, where people were set on fire like living torches.
Cruelty and violence had become a form of amusement, a true perversion of joy, of the true
meaning of life. This "pompa diabuli", this "anticulture" of death was a corruption of joy, it was
love of deceit and fraud and the abuse of the body as a commodity and a trade “
• Those saints who live their baptism, utter a “yes” to God, according to Pope Benedict: “The
"yes" is expressed in three expressions of loyalty: "yes" to the living God, that is, a God
Creator and a creating reason who gives meaning to the cosmos and to our lives; "yes" to
Christ, that is, to a God who did not stay hidden but has a name, words, a body and blood; to
a concrete God who gives us life and shows us the path of life; "yes" to the communion of the
Church, in which Christ is the living God who enters our time, enters our profession, enters
daily life. We might also say that the Face of God, the content of this culture of life, the
content of our great "yes", is expressed in the Ten Commandments, which are not a pack of
prohibitions, of "noes", but actually present a great vision of life. They are a "yes" to a God
who gives meaning to life (the first three Commandments); a "yes" to the family (Fourth
Commandment); a "yes" to life (Fifth Commandment); a "yes" to responsible love (Sixth
Commandment); a "yes" to solidarity, to social responsibility, to justice (Seventh
Commandment); a "yes" to the truth (Eighth Commandment); a "yes" to respect for others
and for their belongings (Ninth and 10th Commandments). “

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• The opening of heaven is a sign that this descent into our night is the dawning of a new day,
that the barrier between God and man is being broken down by this identification of the Son
with us: God is no longer inaccessible; in the depths of our sins, and even of death, he
searches for us and bring us into the light again. To this extent the baptism of Jesus
anticipates the entire drama of his life and death and at the same time explains them to us.
• Tertullian, a Church writer of the second and third centuries, said something surprising. He
said: "Never is Christ without water". By these words, Tertullian meant that Christ is never
without the Church. In Baptism we are adopted by the Heavenly Father, but in this family that
he establishes there is also a mother, Mother Church. Man cannot have God as Father, the
ancient Christian writers were already saying, unless he has the Church as mother. We
perceive in a new way that Christianity is not merely an individual, spiritual reality, a simple
subjective decision that I take, but something real and concrete, we could also say something
material. Adoption as children of God, of the Trinitarian God, is at the same time being
accepted into the family of the Church, it is admission as brothers and sisters into the great
family of Christians.
• Yes, Baptism inserts us into communion with Christ and therefore gives life, life itself…Now,
after the blessing of the water, a second dialogue of great importance will follow. This is its
content: Baptism, as we have seen, is a gift; the gift of life. But a gift must be accepted, it
must be lived. A gift of friendship implies a "yes" to the friend and a "no" to all that is
incompatible with this friendship, to all that is incompatible with the life of God's family, with
true life in Christ. Consequently, in this second dialogue, three "noes" and three "yeses" are
spoken. We say "no" and renounce temptation, sin and the devil. We know these things well
but perhaps, precisely because we have heard them too often, the words may not mean
much to us. If this is the case, we must think a little more deeply about the content of these
"noes". What are we saying "no" to? This is the only way to understand what we want to say
"yes" to.
• Therefore, the Baptism in the Jordan is also an "epiphany", a manifestation of the Lord's
Messianic identity and of his redeeming work, which will culminate in another "baptism", that
of his death and Resurrection, for which the whole world will be purified in the fire of divine
mercy.
• There is a strict relationship between the Baptism of Christ and our Baptism. At the Jordan
the heavens opened (cf. Lk 3: 21) to indicate that the Saviour has opened the way of
salvation and we can travel it thanks to our own new birth "of water and Spirit" (Jn 3: 5),
accomplished in Baptism. In it we are inserted into the Mystical Body of Christ, that is, the
Church, we die and rise with him, we are clothed with him, as the Apostle Paul often
emphasized (cf. I Cor 12: 13; Rom 6: 3-5; Gal 3: 27). The commitment that springs from
Baptism is therefore "to listen" to Jesus: to believe in him and gently follow him, doing his
will.

7. Other Considerations

• Compare the yeses of Baptism to the yes of John the Baptist to Jesus.

Recommended Resources
Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI ed. Peter John Cameron, Ignatius Press, 2006.
Gundry, Robert H., Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art. Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1982.
Harrington, Daniel J., S.J., The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 1, ed. By Daniel J
Harrington, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991.
Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer, and Roland Murphy,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968.
Schweizer, Eduard. The Good News according to Matthew. Trans. By David E. Green, Atlanta:
John Know Press, 1975.