Baptism of the Lord

Dear Parish Family,

Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. This event was the inaugurating moment of Jesus’ public ministry. This is not different from our own baptism which inaugurates us into the life of grace. Our lives are forever changed. From the moment we are baptized we take on a specific identity in Jesus.

I think this is a good occasion to recall the basics of Sacramental Theology. First, what is a “sacrament?” The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines sacraments as, “...efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions” (CCC #1131). More in brief, the sacraments are visible realities that, when celebrated, enact invisibly realities – the impartation of actual grace which is the Life of God.

So when we are baptized, water is used as a sign of the cleansing we receive in the regenerating bath of grace. Being dunked in the water or having it poured over us evokes the meaning of being washed; and this is purposeful, because by this visible, tangible action, we are cleansed inwardly from the state of original sin and slavery, and a new state of grace and freedom are given to us by the life of the Trinity.

This paradigm of the visible and material communicating to us the invisible and spiritual is present in all of the Seven Sacraments of the Church. Jesus himself established the Sacraments of the New Covenant precisely because he is a human being. He knows that we learn and communicate through tangible expressions, and so he wanted us to be able to have the certainty of his work of grace through sensible realities. And this is sensible; our God is a God of reason and compassion, so he works in ways that make sense to us.

Peace and good.

-Fr. Kennell