If I had been a member of a bridge club or a fraternity, yet I had left the club because I did not agree with their rules, could I still claim to be a member of that club? The answer seems pretty obvious that I should not claim membership to a group which I have such deep disagreement. If I wanted to make the bridge club play euchre or the fraternity drop out of college altogether, could I really say that I represent the ideas and positions of each group? Better still, if I claim to be a member of the club yet I never attend nor do I support the club, am I really living as a member of that club? Yet how many will claim that they are Catholic yet either disagree with one of the Church’s fundamental positions or offer little in the way of support or even their presence in church?
As we conclude the Christmas season, we look at the mystery of the inauguration of Christ’s public ministry: His baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. We receive another epiphany of Christ, another manifestation of the One whose birth we have been celebrating these past few weeks. But in this manifestation is made present not only Christ, but the full Trinity which is at the heart of the divine being. God the Father speaks towards God the Son, while God the Spirit descends and anoints the Son as the Christ, the Messiah, the One chosen from before time to bring about the redemption and salvation of humanity.
Christ undergoes His baptism not out of a need for it; how can He who is God incarnate have any need for the removal of sins? Yet He willingly receives His baptism so as to receive the anointing from which the name Christ comes. Jesus also undergoes baptism, Saint Ambrose tells us, so that the waters of the world are made clean for baptism (cf. Catena Aurea on Lk 3:21-22). This moment marks the transition from Christ’s life as unknown son of a carpenter to His very public ministry of preaching and teaching and effecting miracles, all pointing towards His ultimate destination in Jerusalem on Good Friday and beyond.
Jesus’ baptism serves to distinguish Him from all the rest of humanity through those words pronounced by God the Father from on high: “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” In this statement is revealed that Jesus will be the fulfillment of all that was prophesied, most especially something we hear in Isaiah today: the chosen One of God upon whom His Spirit dwells. From here we will see Jesus revealing bit by bit the mysteries of the kingdom of God until all is opened to us on Easter and at Pentecost.
Yet the Baptism we celebrate today should make us mindful of our own baptism, for each one of us has been washed clean by the waters of baptism. We have become members of Christ and of His Church through this cleansing action, along with becoming a new creation in the New Man who is Christ. In union with Christ, each one of us is called by the Father “His beloved, in whom He is pleased,” because of our union with His only-begotten Son that begins at the moment the water touches our forehead and the priest says the baptismal formula over us.
Baptism should remind us of the great miracle of water worked by God for the Israelites as they escaped Egypt, when Moses invoked God to part the waters of the Red Sea so that they could escape slavery in Egypt. Just as the whole people of Israel passed through the parted waters towards freedom, so too have we passed through water towards the freedom from slavery and freedom in Christ. Yet, just as the journey of the Israelites was not finished at that point, so too is our journey in Christ not finished at baptism, but has only just begun.
When we are baptized, we make a solemn vow to reject Satan and all his empty works and all his empty show, taking instead as our captain and guide Christ and His Church. This vow means that we belong now to nothing else and no one else but God. No one has any right upon us except God in whom we have been redeemed and are on the way to salvation. Yet how often is it that we do not truly realize this reality but instead try to make God to be beholden to us?
Many modern Christians will try to claim that they love Christ but do not love His Church, or they will say that it would be better if the Church changed some of her positions on certain topics so as to catch up to the times or to better attract the masses. Yet many of these positions strike at the very core of the Church’s beliefs and, in fact, infringe upon those teachings which have been revealed to us by the God who was personally present to humanity over two thousand years ago and still speaks today through the Church which He has founded upon the apostles. To change any of these positions would be like our earlier examples of making the bridge club play euchre or the fraternity drop out of college. It redefines what it means to be Catholic and to be a Christian.
When we were baptized, each one of us was made bound to God with and through His Church. This does not give us the right to decide what is to be held or what is to be tossed aside. Ours is to accept that which has been handed on to the apostles and has been passed on to us whole and complete for over two thousand years. We do not get to decide what the Church believes and professes, but it is we who accept what she teaches and proclaim it to the world. To do otherwise is to be like the numerous Protestant branches claiming to act in the name of the universal and traditional Church when they have splintered so far from the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church that it seems as if new branches are splintering off by the minute.
In baptism, we have received the gift of God’s mercy first won for us on the Cross and the promise of the Resurrection. This in turn imposes a sacred duty upon each one of us to maintain the traditions which have been delivered to us from the apostles (cf. 1 Cor 11:2). If we are to be members of the Catholic Church, we cannot then let the phrase, “I’m Catholic, but...” escape our lips. Otherwise, we are not faithful to the vow we made at baptism and to the Church which Jesus Himself established and maintains to this very day. And if we are not faithful, then we will not be the beloved children of God and unworthy of the reward God wishes to give to us.
Let us not fall into the trap of the devil in trying to make ourselves the rule of faith, but let us be obedient to Christ through His Church. Let us be faithful to our baptism and to the vows we made, following the example of the One who was first baptized. Let us renew our vows to reject Satan and to believe in Christ and begin to live out those vows each day. Let us marvel in the mystery of the life of Christ who leads us on as He lead the Israelites from slavery to freedom. Let us not make our baptisms the beginning of our eternal condemnation, but the beginning of our eternal life in Christ, where we will receive the reward of faith for all time.
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