Homily for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord and the end of the Christmas season. Over the past three weeks, with the shepherds and the Wise Men, we have marveled at the fact that God is made man, emptying Himself to share our human condition. He is fragile and dependent as all children are. He is poor – born in a stable surrounded by animals and laid in a manger. He is an exile from his homeland and is sought by ruthless murderers.

Today, we find Jesus an adult, emerging from the hidden years in Nazareth, coming to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But we find Jesus in no more glamorous a setting: He is standing in the muddy waters of the Jordan, standing alongside all the sinners of Israel, who have come to John to repent of their sins and be baptized.

Just as Jesus emptied Himself, and took on flesh, shared in our human condition, and knew poverty and want, so too Jesus now stands alongside us in our sinfulness – even though He Himself was completely without sin.

Jesus does all this to right the world which has been turned upside down by our sins; to make us righteous, and to put us in right relationship with God, by bringing us into His relationship with His heavenly Father.

And so, the feast of the Baptism of the Lord doesn’t just commemorate Jesus’ Baptism two thousand years ago – it reminds us that on the day of our Baptisms we were incorporated into Christ Jesus – we were made a part of His body, we were given a share in His relationship to the Father – and the Father said to us, as he said to Jesus in today’s Gospel: “You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.”

It’s no accident that Jesus’ Baptism occurs at the very start of His public ministry. It is His self-understanding, His knowledge that He is God’s beloved Son, which gives rise to Jesus’ ministry, and shapes His life and death.

Jesus is compelled by this self-knowledge of God’s love to serve all humanity. And in everything He says and does, in everything He experiences, including the Cross, Jesus knows that He is God’s beloved Son.

So we too, by virtue of our Baptism, by virtue of knowing that we are God’s beloved children are called to live in loving service of our brothers and sisters. We too have been given a vocation, a mission in the life of the Church and the world, to bring others into right relationship with our Heavenly Father.

That’s why we celebrate all this week, beginning with the Baptism of the Lord, a week for vocations. God is calling each and every one of us, as His beloved children, to a mission of service as spouses and parents, as priests, as religious brothers or sisters.

I’m happy that here at Notre Dame many young men and women ask me and my fellow Holy Cross priests about how to discern a vocation. Many students want to properly consider a vocation to religious life or priesthood – and if they are considering a call to married life, they want to walk that path as they should – as a true Christian vocation.

But they still have questions about how to best discern and decide where God is calling them. How do we know what mission God has for our lives? I’m convinced that today’s Gospel shows us what the first step must be: we must first hear God’s voice call us His beloved.

“You are my beloved. It is certainly not easy to hear this voice,” is it? “We live in a world so filled with other voices: ‘You’re no good; you’re too ugly; you’re too fat; you’re worthless.’”

So much of our society and our own psyches can drown out this voice that calls us ‘beloved’ and we allow the troublesome things that happen in our lives to serve as some kind of proof that these negative voices are true. Indeed, this is one of the “greatest enemies of the spiritual life” because the drowning out of this voice keeps us from hearing the truth and dignity of our identity.

So how is it that we can come to hear this voice in our lives and come to know ourselves as God beloved, and come to know the vocation He has for our lives?

Well, the entire life of the Church, every aspect of Christian discipleship is meant to aid us in hearing the Divine voice that calls us ‘beloved.’ The Scriptures are the great love story between God and His beloved – us – and His plan unfolding through time to save us. The Liturgy and Sacraments are manifestations of Christ Himself, and through them He continues to make us God’s beloved. And the lives of the saints are the stories of all those who heard the Divine voice, allowed their lives to be shaped by it, and so came to live the life of Christ, the beloved.

But as we start this new semester I want to suggest just one other spiritual practice as a means of hearing this Divine voice: silence. It is only when we silence all the other voices and noises of our hectic world, and listen in silence that we will be able to hear God’s persistent whisper.

I know that we are all extremely busy with classes, and homework, and planning for life after graduation. And then there are the various forms of media that fill our lives with noise of all sort. It is tremendously difficult to find time to “waste” in silence.

But I don’t think it is an accident that our observance of Christmas begins on a Silent Night and ends with us hearing God’s voice calling us His beloved. If we want to reap the fruit of Christmas throughout the year – if we long to know in our innermost selves that we are indeed God’s beloved – if we want to know and follow the vocation that God has for our lives – then we must certainly quiet ourselves so that we can hear the glad tidings of the angels, and God’s voice saying: “You are my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased.”