The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord serves as the bridge between the liturgical season of Christmas and Ordinary Time. Pope Saint John Paul II began the tradition of baptizing babies born to the Vatican's lay employees each year on this Feast in the Sistine Chapel. I admit that it must be a very cool experience for those families!
But then again, every time baptism is celebrated, something remarkable, even otherworldly, takes place. I have baptized children who were dying in hospitals with just a few drops. I know people who (before becoming Catholic) were baptized by rivers or in storefront churches out West. Yet even without the grandeur of Michelangelo's frescos, we see something amazing about a small child or an adult, born naturally to his or her parents, now becoming a child of God through water and the Holy Spirit.
We have gotten used to calling ourselves "children of God." But that's because so much of our culture is influenced by Christianity. The fact is that many religions of the world do not claim such a reality—in fact, some would consider it blasphemous for a person to call himself a "child of God." Jesus himself was condemned to death precisely for this. On trial before Caiaphas, the question is put to him directly: "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" Jesus replies, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven" (Mk 14:61-62). This response is enough for the high priest to issue a summary judgment on the case: guilty of a capital crime.
We are all children of God because—and only because—we have died and risen with Christ in Baptism. We dare to call God our Father because, through the sacrament of Baptism, God adopts us and claims us as his own. In seeing us now, he sees his own beloved Son, who is God from God from all eternity.
In a sense, then, the Baptism of the Lord, so often forgotten, is the high point of the Christmas season. Christmas itself gets all the attention, of course. The beautiful Feast of Epiphany is very significant, too. However, the inauguration of Jesus' public life when John baptizes him parallels the beginning of our own new and divine life, which we received at our Baptism.
Do you know your baptism day? If not, your homework today is to look it up, memorize it, put it on your calendar, and celebrate it like a birthday - only better! And if your parents were the ones who brought you to be baptized, give them a call and thank them—or pray in gratitude for them if they are no longer with us—because amid all the toys and games and vacations and schooling, that was the greatest gift they gave you.
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