Homily
for January 11, 2004
Year C - Cycle II
Baptism of
the Lord
by Fr. John Carney
Topic:
Knowing Who We Are
+ + +
Gospel Reading:
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
"The people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ. John answered them all, saying, 'I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.' After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.'"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. John was preaching and performing a ritual baptism of repentance from sin. What he would do was a fairly typical act of piety among Jews at the time of Christ, and people would go to the water and would see John or others doing this. They would confess their sins and then the preacher, just like in the south, would dip them in the water and lift them up. It was a ritual absolution of sins. The symbol of water is death because of drowning. The Hebrew people, and the Jews later, have no great love for water. They consider it a source of chaos; of death and danger. Fortunately they live in a desert. This was a ritual baptism. They had another more formal form of penance, each year during Yom Kippur, in September or October whenever in the Jewish calendar the day fell. On Yom Kippur the High Priest, would take a goat, grab the goat by the horns and confess the sins of the people over the goat. Then the goat would be driven out into the wilderness and with it the sins of the people. That’s where the term “scapegoat” came from. Interesting isn’t it, because to think of what Jesus did for us with his sacrificial death, he was our scapegoat. Right? We put our sins on him and he took them away. You can see how all these things are fulfilled, the old scriptures and the new scriptures, the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures.
The question is often asked, “Why was Jesus baptized, because he doesn’t know sin?” The answer is that he did symbolically in baptism on that day in the Jordan what he would do actually three years later. He would take on the sins of all the people and then die and then be raised again free of any trace of sin. That’s the reason. He showed us what we must do to be saved symbolically, with his sacrificial death on the cross. Christ is baptized not to be made holy by the waters, but to make the waters holy for you and for me. But Baptism, your Baptism and my Baptism, is not a passive experience. It does more than remove sin; it makes us God’s children, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, and heirs to eternal life. So it reminds us as I mentioned in the beginning of Mass, who we are. We are children of God. That’s why we live temperate and holy lives as you heard in the second reading.
There are other reasons to avoid sin, lots of reasons to avoid sin. Even if a person is an atheist or an agnostic, it is good not to sin. Sin makes you miserable. I think we know that from experience. Think of a sin, and where does it lead…to happiness? Think of the sin of anger, it leads to violence. The sin of lust leads to promiscuity and broken relationships and to disease and to death. The sin of intemperance leads to addiction and to disease and to death. Sins of greed…no one is happy because of money. If we all won the lottery today, we’d be happy for a week or so and then we’d be our miserable selves, or worse, two weeks later. Money doesn’t make you happy. Money can make you miserable, but money doesn’t make you happy. Every sin doesn’t lead to happiness; just something temporary, a little bit of pleasure maybe, but it destroys us. We know that. So that’s a reason to avoid sin.
Secondly, we as Christians want to avoid hell. There is some updated preaching going on in the Christian world saying there is no hell. There is a hell. The number one teacher of the reality of hell in the Scriptures is Jesus Christ. If you look at the references of hell and Gehenna and punishment in the Scriptures, I would bet you that most of the references and warnings of hell were from the lips of Jesus. Not because he wanted to threaten us, but because he wanted to warn us, as you warn the people you love of great danger. I don’t know about you, actually I do know about you, and you don’t want to go to hell and neither do I. There is such a place, and the people there I hope never to meet. That’s a good reason to avoid sin.
But the premier reason, the best reason, to avoid sin is we are God's children. How can we sin? We are children of God. St. Augustine said, “Christian, know your dignity. Know who you are.” I think the greatest problem is we don’t know who we are. You talk about self-esteem problems; Christians should have no problems with self-esteem. You are a child of God. That’s having connections in high places. But we don’t know who we are. I remember shortly after I was ordained, there was a very beautiful Spanish custom and I think Polish people do it too. There is a custom of kissing the priest’s hands. The reason people do that is they want to show reverence to Christ, not to the priest, but to Christ who the priest brings sacramentally to the people. I remember I was ordained and maybe 15 minutes after the Mass, an old Spanish lady took my hands and kissed them. I pulled back and thought, “That’s un-American!” She grabbed my hands to kiss them and she said, “You don’t know who you are!” I was ordained like 15 minutes and I was already chewed out for the first time! It continues today. Don’t misunderstand that. She wasn’t kissing John Francis Carney’s hands, not that guy. She was kissing the hands of Christ. If priests knew that, they wouldn’t do bad things with those hands…if they knew who they were and who they are. Likewise, if Christians know who they are, they wouldn’t sin.
Now I don’t know about you, but it’s my experience, and I think teachers would agree, that we do our best work when our self esteem is good. In other words, if you really want to avoid sin, the best motive is to know that you are a child of God. Then we do our best, we perform our best, not to avoid punishment, but because it is who we are. I think that’s the lesson of Baptism - that we are God’s sons and God’s daughters. That is especially true for young people today. Never has it been more difficult for young people to live holy lives than it is today. Do you know the stuff that goes in their heads from the media and from music? A lot of times in confession they’ll say, “I’ve used bad, foul language” and I say, “What kind of music do you listen to?” and they say “rap.” Is there foul language? They say you should listen to some of that, but I can’t. I can’t listen to one minute of that stuff. I tell you if I die and I wake up and they’re playing that stuff, I’ll know I didn’t make it! So to young people, know who you are. You are God’s sons and God’s daughters, so talk like it, act like it, live like it, dress like it. You are a child of God.
By the way, don’t ever not go to confession because you forgot the formula. Don’t worry about the formula. Just go. I learned the long version of the Act of Contrition. Remember that one? Remember how fast we used to say it on Saturday afternoons? Some people still use it. Some people, some very well-educated people, make some mistakes with it and they’ll say, “Oh my God, I am hardly sorry. Excuse me, heartily, for having defended thee,” or “I detest all my sins because I dread the laws of heaven.” The loss of heaven, oh yeah, that too. “But most of all because my sins offend thee, my God, who is all good and deserving of all my love.” That’s the key. That’s it. That’s why we live holy and temperate lives. We look forward to eternal reward as children of God.
“Oh Christian, know your dignity. You have been born from above. Walk now as children of light.”