Baptismal Call - Saints

Audio: Click here (Sat. 5:30pm)
As we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord last Monday (not on Sunday this year), so now today we are presented with the Gospel of John’s version of the Baptism of Jesus, which only appears as something John the Baptist describes after the fact, explaining to the disciples his own testimony, “bearing witness to the Light” of the World, that Jesus is indeed the Lamb of God, but most important of all, as we heard in the last line: “He is the Son of God.”  You see, of all the titles of Jesus, this one is different, and indeed the greatest, because it gets most perfectly at the essence of who Jesus is.  He is the only-begotten Son of the eternal Father, and thus God Himself and co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

It is in the Baptism of Jesus that his mission is first made known.  It was before now a secret kept by a select few to whom God had privately revealed it.  In their deep personal prayer, Mary, Joseph, (and perhaps his parents) Simeon, Anna, and John the Baptist (and probably his parents Zechariah and Elizabeth) had a sense of what Jesus was sent on earth to do, but now John whispers this well­-kept secret in a few symbolic phrases to his closest disciples, who now will become Jesus’ followers.  He is the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and thus be made known to Israel.

Baptism gives a mission to Jesus.  And thus it does to us.

I was fortunate to do my first baptism here last Sunday.  And this Sunday I am to be a Godfather for a local family’s child.  And even more, my sister Katie had her first child, a girl named Therese Rose after our patroness, the Little Flower, and after Mother Teresa.  What a gift.  God is so good, and new life is a blessing.  But baptism, my friends, is a calling, a calling Saint Paul makes very clear in the beginning of his 1^st letter to the Corinthians.  Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are called to be Holy (saints).

We are called Christians, little Christs, little anointed ones (“baptized with the holy spirit”)

1.      Priest – Adam (Moses/Aaron/Levi)

2.      Prophet – John the Baptist

3.      King -  David

The saints help us to flesh this out.  They bring the Bible to life in our world today.  They are like adding sound and color an old silent film, it makes everything burst out at you in a new way.

Read their lives, even in the book we might have chosen for Christmas (watch films about them – n.b. some are better than others!)

My saint = Rose of Lima.

We all have Mary, Joseph, and Therese, and our baptismal & confirmation names.

Let them show you how to live out your baptismal call, to be what you were made to be.  It’s not a secret anymore, you are a little Christ, baptized in the Holy Spirit, and meant to be a Saint who brings the Gospel to life in our world today.