Reflections of our Parochial Vicar

You are My Beloved Son.

With You I Am Well Pleased!

We recently experienced the wonder of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, wherein we celebrate that we are loved so much that God sent His only Son into the world to teach us how to live and treat each other and He also sent His Son to die in expiation for our sins, thereby allowing us the chance to rise with Christ to eternal life in the Resurrection.  We celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany last week and we hopefully concentrated on its meaning that we suddenly realize how close our God is to us. In fact, He walks among us every day of our lives.  Today we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, where our Lord, who had no need of the sacrament since he was God, submitted to Baptism by John the Baptist.  Why? Perhaps as with Jesus’ entire earthly ministry, He was baptized so that we might know that we are asked to be baptized as the first of the three sacraments of initiation into our faith. It is the initial “Yes” to the invitation to share life with Him. The other two sacraments of initiation draw us ever more closely into union with God.

 

The first of these is typically Eucharist, where we are invited to the banquet of the Lord where we are invited to participate in the death to the ways of the world and live in the hope of God and eternal life. At this stage we celebrate the love of God for us and the extent of that self-giving love. Our third sacrament of initiation is Confirmation, where the person affirms the choice of God in their life. We also recognize in this sacrament that we are to go forth and continue the  mission on earth of Jesus by first our own conversion to the ways of Christ and later to lead others to Christ . We recognize that this may involve sacrifice and it definitely will call for commitment. Typically, this is after the person to be confirmed has lived in the world and is of sufficient maturity to choose God – to choose life!

 

In all of these sacraments, indeed for all of our faith, we are called to commit! Our “Yes” should mean “Yes” and our “No” should mean “No”.  I believe that this is where the need for focus belongs. We have heard the word “Cafeteria Catholics”, which refers to Catholics who choose to believe in some aspects of their faith and reject others.  By being equivocal about the basics of our faith we are not saying a clear resounding “Yes!” to salvation through Jesus.  This equivocation is closer to rejection than assent in most cases. That is the hard truth.

 As Jesus was baptized, His “Yes” meant “Yes!”, and He knew that he would have to give his life in a most horrific death. THAT faith, THAT commitment is what I attribute the comment of being well-pleased by God the Father. Perhaps that is why the sacrifice of Jesus was so gruesome, that total self-giving.  Relatively few who have been baptized, throughout all of history, in all places have been/are  asked to be crucified for our faith. We ARE asked to die to the ways of the world so that we might share eternal life. Let us choose life with God every day!

Fr. Mike