Today we conclude, with Vespers, the Christmas Season’s and begin our entrance into Ordinary Time, where the color green replaces the white vestments of Christmastime and all the flowers and the colorful explosion of festivities that is Christmas. In this last feast of Christmastime, we hear in the words of Isaiah the importance of the call of Baptism—and Isaiah’s ancient words should both resonate with us today and be of equal if not greater applicability to our modern lives.

In our first reading we hear these powerful words from the prophet: “I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice, I have grasped you by the hand; I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.” 

In this we hear that our God is connected to us and holds us, as the prayer goes, “in the palm of His hands.” For us today, we can take this meaning to extend to the Sacrament of Baptism, where we know that on that day of the Sacrament God is not loving us for the first time but that He already knows us—and loved us—before we were formed in our mother’s womb. But on our baptism, we are given an indelible mark, a supernatural grace from God that enables us, when formed in faith especially by our parents and family that we able to freely choose to love God back through the way we “minister to Him as we minister to others.” (EPII) God holds our hands.

Holding hands can be both reassuring and uncomfortable. Think of the first time you held your date’s hand or when you were unexpectedly asked to hold someone’s hand during the Our Father at Mass? Or, think back to when you were a little child and someone grasped your hand to walk you across a busy street or along the route to school? One is oddly uncomfortable, the other very reassuring. Now think how our loving God takes hold of our hands, walks with us on our faith journey, calls us to be His adopted daughter or son, and invites us to partner with Him in carrying for one who is hungry and without food, wandering without shelter, or feels
abandoned in the midst of loss and grief. Isaiah reminds us that God is with us—He is Emmanuel, God with us until the end of the age.

Today the Lord Himself is baptized by John and the Holy Spirit—God anoints Him and calls Him to spread the Gospel of Salvation to the whole world (known world at that time) and now with the gift of Baptism given to us all, as we are now called—by Baptism—to spread the gift of salvation, the Good News of the Gospel to our known world—in our time and place.

How do we understand the Sacrament of Baptism? What is its meaning in our faith and to what are we commanded to do? From my personal experience as a priest, for some it is a ritual, basically cute and something done to please “nana or gampy or mom or dad—or maybe to make sure the child can one day be married in the Church.” For many it is a deeply spiritual and meaning Sacrament meant to enable the child to one day grow closer to God and to serve God in-and-through the Church so that the gift of eternal life is made more real (not that we “earn” heaven but that in choosing and following Christ we align our wills to His Will and so carry out
His righteous mission in our families, the Church and community. In the Acts of the Apostles reading today we hear Peter instruct us that the Word of God sent to Israel informs us “…that beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power.

He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” Indeed God was (is) with Him and He is with us after our baptism, we are also called to “do good” in His Name by following His teachings given to us in Baptism and from our parents, who truly form us in the Faith. At the end of the Rite of Baptism, the priest concludes the ritual with three (3) brief prayers, the first two (2) are over the parents and end with the parents being reminded that “they are the first of teachers in the ways of faith, and may they be the best of teachers by what they say and do.” This is how the family, comprised of a mother and father, are so important as they represent the fullness of God, both male and female, and from each we learn different yet vital things which make us fully human. And being fully human we are then, with God’s Divine Grace, are able to accept the challenge of faith and in the “doing good” by our lives we image the fullness of God Himself. Baptism—something amazingly powerful and enriching— something eternally important.