BAPTISM OF OUR LORD
Is 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts 10:34-38; Lk 3: 15-16, 21-22

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus! Today the Mother Church celebrates the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. This feast marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and also marks the beginning of God’s kingdom on earth. The specialty of this day is that so far we hear john speaking indirectly about Jesus and his identity. But today we see the Father himself openly letting everyone know that he is his beloved Son. As Jesus comes out of the water after his baptism, the heaven opens and the Holy Spirit comes down on him in the form of a dove. The Father in heaven recognizes him as His beloved son. In the same way when we receive baptism we become the adapted sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. He calls each one of us by name saying dear Jennie I adopt you as my daughter today, Dear John I adapt you today as my son.
Though we have been living in darkness of sin, God in his mercy comes down to us in the form of the word, Jesus. He carries away all our sins and gives us a renewed life of grace and makes us his heirs through Baptism. In the previous verse John says that he is unworthy to untie the thongs of Jesus’ sandal. It indicates our sinful human condition. Baptism changes our status from being unworthy to becoming worthy of Jesus’ brothers and sisters through adoption.

Immersion and emersion symbolizes our death and resurrection. When we take part in Jesus’ baptism, we die to sin and rise to new life filled with God’s graces. Though there was no need for Jesus to undergo baptism, in his humility, out of his merciful love for the world, he undertakes this process in order to set us an example of the kind of life we are to live.

Any gift is always accompanied by great responsibilities. Isiah lists out the responsibilities that accompanied Jesus’ baptism and his son ship with God the father: he was to be the light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from their confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness, and ultimately to give up his life for the salvation of the world.

How did he fulfill these responsibilities? He did give sight to the physically blind and to the Religious leaders who were spiritually blind. He did release the prisoner physically when he was on the cross and brought out people who were confined to their sinful imprisonment. He did bring to light of the good news of the Kingdom those who lived in the darkness of ungodly life. Luke also in his acts of the apostles confirms that Jesus after his baptism went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil. And we see the effect of Jesus’ example in the life of peter. He continues to do what Jesus commanded the apostles to do. Peter orders those gentiles who were at Cornelius’ house to be baptized.

While God’s gift of our adaption as his children gives us the privilege to call him Abba Father, to be his heirs of the inheritance of the kingdom, it places a responsibility up on us to continue fulfilling what Jesus did. This adoption at the first place calls us to be open to receive God’s infinite mercy and to share the same with others. Mathew’s passage on last judgement gives us a list of good works through which we could share God’s mercy with others: feeding the hungry, quenching the thirsty, inviting the stranger in to our homes, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoners etc. Poverty, hunger, nakedness, imprisonment could be within oneself or in others; it could be either physical or spiritual. Whatever it may be, the important thing is to share God’s mercy freely which he has given us freely.