This morning’s Gospel reading is 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.”

How many of us recall our own baptism? Most of us probably received it as infants; I was 'christened' a couple of months after my birth. Even so, we have all been through the baptism of others, perhaps many others, where we are called to affirm our own baptismal promises, especially for those sponsoring the person being baptized. 

What are those promises? I almost hesitate to reference The Godfather, where Francis Ford Coppolla used a baptism to underscore the complete corruption of Michael Corleone, but the film does depict the baptismal rite's professions of faith fairly accurately:

• Do you reject Satan?
• And all his works?
• Do you reject sin, so as to live in the freedom of God's children?
• Do you reject the glamor of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?
• Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness?
• Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?
• Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?
• Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?

Having assented to all of these professions of faith, the celebrant then proclaims, "This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. We are proud to profess it in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

The purpose of this baptism is to allow us the grace to enter into the salvation of Christ and to free us from our sinful natures. The catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the sacrament of baptism is essential for salvation through grace. 

Today's passage from Luke demonstrates that necessity. Christ Himself received baptism to fully enter into His mission to provide salvation through His teaching and sacrifice. In doing so, Jesus humbled Himself to John the Baptist, who then humbled himself to Jesus as the Holy Spirit descended. It is that exchange that fully transforms Jesus into the Christ, and it is that exchange -- where we humble ourselves before others of the Church -- where we first receive the grace of the Lord.

But how do we find our way to Him? Baptism doesn't perfect us; if it did, we would have no need for the Gospel or the other sacraments. We wander far from the Lord in our lives, and sometimes for a very long time. Despite those baptismal promises, we fall into sin, get blinded by its glamors, and in many ways become mastered by it through our worldly addictions. In those times, just as Coppolla depicted in his first masterpiece, our baptismal promises become a rebuke to the lives we live.

However, the grace of the Lord does not leave us, even while we reject those covenant promises. He remains faithful to us even when we prove unfaithful to Him, always waiting for us to recall those baptismal promises and return to His love. The Lord promised as much in His original covenant with Abraham, in Genesis 15, where He first promised then-Abram that he would become the father of nations and uncountable children. The nature of the ceremony underscores just how much the Father loved Abram:

⁹ So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

¹⁰ Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. ¹¹ Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

¹² As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. ¹³ Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. ¹⁴ But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. ¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

¹⁷ When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. ¹⁸ On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi^[e] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— ¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, ²⁰ Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, ²¹ Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

In those days, two people would use sacrifices set up in this manner to seal an agreement or covenant of serious natures. However, to seal this covenant, both parties would pass between the halved sacrifices, making it into a blood oath that could not be forsaken without blood being shed as a result. In this passage, though, only the Lord passes between the halved sacrifices. The Lord passes through in the forms of light given in this passage and then declares the covenant complete. The blood of this covenant is therefore on the Lord, and only the Lord is bound to recompense in blood.

And this is exactly what transpires in the Passion. Jesus receives His baptism to fulfill that covenant, broke often by Abraham's descendants, in order to pay for the betrayals that we have committed. Jesus would die for our sins, freeing us from death and bringing us the grace to allow us to enter into eternal life with the Father and the communion of all those who choose salvation through Him. 

Did Jesus need baptism to fulfill that mission? Presumably not, but Jesus and John established it for us -- because we need it. It is the answer to the voice that calls from the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord, as we hear in our first reading from Isaiah 40:

A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!

Baptism allows us to build that highway for our God to our own hearts. By doing that, we are better able to recognize that voice crying out in the wilderness while we are exiled by sin, so that we can find our way back to Him. But whether we recognize it or not, our own voices cry out in the wilderness, even though we may be lost and disoriented and not even know for what -- or Whom -- we seek.  

Does our voice cry out? Do we prepare our hearts for Him? The Lord awaits our cry, and keeps sending out His cries for us to come back to Him and the covenant of our own baptisms. He has already paid in blood for our salvation and betrayals; all we need to do is open our hearts and allow the Holy Spirit to return.  

Previous reflections on these readings:

• No mountain high enough, no valley low enough: Sunday reflection (2022)
• The gift of baptism: Sunday reflection (2019)
• Sunday reflection: Luke 3:15–16, 21–22 (2016)

The front page image is "Baptism of Christ" by an unknown artist, c. 5th century, in the Daniel Korkor church in Tigray, Ethiopia. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.