REFLECTION Sunday´s Gospel

Feast of the Lord’s baptism (9 January 2011)

Fr James McTavish FMVD

Don’t be afraid to dive in!

There was an advert in the papers for Procrastinators Anonymous. It read “Meeting tomorrow at 3pm. Are you coming? Yes or maybe not.” Every person experiences times when they need to make decisions. Sometimes they are easy and at other times difficult. Often we do not know exactly what the outcome will be. I was talking to one man this week and he is not sure whether to change his job or not. For sure these issues need to be discerned carefully. To weigh up the pros and cons, the advantages and disadvantages, to pray, to seek good counsel. Even St Ignatius advised to place yourself at the last moment of your life and look back over your life and see what you would wish you had have done. After all this one may feel that it is indeed the correct course of action. Then what? You gotta dive in!

In the baptism scene in today’s gospel Jesus takes the plunge. He shows us the way. Actually he should never have been in that line of sinners. John the Baptist was giving them a baptism of repentance. John was confused why Jesus, being the sinless one, needs to be baptized. The evangelist records “John tried to prevent him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” Jesus said to him in reply, “Allow it now, because we must do this if we would fulfil all of God’s demands” (see Matt 3, 13-17).

Often God will ask us to take small steps. Are we faithful in the small details of his will? Many times we want to know what will happen and we do not take the step. But think of a car on a journey. It lights only light up the immediate way in front of it. It would be unthinkable, impractical and surely dangerous if it lit up the whole way to the destination. All that is needed is to light up the immediate pathway. That is why Jesus tells us “walk while you have the light” because the light with be you only a short while (John 12, 49). To follow the inspirations trusting in God.

After Jesus came up from the murky waters it was then that he got the confirmation. Then and only then! “After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” It is a manifestation or epiphany of the Trinity. In fact in some Eastern churches, the Feast of the Epiphany is celebrated not by the Magi but by the Baptism scene as here the Father reveals who Jesus, the beloved Son, and this is confirmed by the presence of the Spirit. Often we see a dove released at weddings here in the Philippines as a sign of the Spirit which will unite the couple in love and guide them to be faithful to each other. Often taking a step, the confirmation comes later. I was always inspired by the testimony of the founder of AppleMac computers (and later Pixar animations), Steve Jobs. He was a college drop out but the one class he attended was Japanese calligraphy. There he learned about the beauty of aesthetics from the Japanese characters. Later he used that knowledge to design the Apple Mac computers. In our lives we see these moments that would later define us.

As an adventurous 20 year old medical student, I went backpacking with friends in our summer break to Asia. I fell in love with this vast continent, struck by the sights and sounds that conspire to inspire in this paradise of paradox (those last words are not mine but were in my guide book for Thailand. I still remember them more than 20 years later as I used to put them on postcards to send back to my friends so that I would sound so literary and arty!) If I am assigned in the Philippines today it is because the seed for Asia was planted all those years ago.

Entering into the unknown we need that certainty that God is with us. He will manifest his presence but at times we need to dive in and then God confirms on the way. As George Michael would sing “you gotta have faith.” Hope is also a great travelling companion even when all around seems grim and grey. As Max Ehrmann said “With all the sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” How do we see the world around us? It is still beautiful or has it become grey by our cynicism, dull from our lack of hope, uninspiring because of our lack of faith. Jesus never lost the vision that it is a beautiful world. You can imagine him singing many times “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world!” He is not afraid to dive in, to go for it. No one will stop him. His entrance into the Jordan is his entrance into a suffering humanity. His baptism is his passion and death, and of course his resurrection. In Luke 12, 49 he says “I have a baptism to undergo and what anguish I have until it is accomplished.” The baptism is his suffering and death. How great is Jesus that he does not love faith, hope and love in suffering. How easy to give up when things are not clear! But our Lord goes ahead and opens the way. Pope John Paul II commented that the passion of our Lord was a a kind of immersion in suffering redemptively accepted for the salvation of all.

Let us ask for the grace of courage, to be filled with the Spirit, not of timidity but of power, love and self control. May we have the courage to do God’s will, to not be afraid to dive in and not to expect all the guarantees until we do so. God is faithful and will not abandon us halfway. When Jesus came up from the water then he got the accolades – Lord increase our faith, may we be faithful to what you are asking us and be sensitive to the many signs you give us along the journey. Amen.