Baptism of the Lord, C January 9, 2022
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
This past Wednesday, Pope Francis stirred up some controversy when he talked about families who get pets instead of having children. People were upset that he called it “selfish.” Maybe there was a better way to say what he said, but he’s right. It’s a statistical reality that less and less couples are having kids and more and more are getting pets. All the time, you’ll see people call themselves a “dog dad” or a “cat mom.”
Don’t get me wrong. I love animals too – I grew up with dogs. Pets can be great. It’s good to love animals. But they aren’t people, are they? Even at the basic level of biology, a child is the same species as their parent. There is a kind of equality. The relationship between father and child or mother and child assumes an equal dignity, a common foundation of both being human.
I get that a lot of people don’t literally mean their pets are their children, but some kind of seem like they do. Some people spend more on pets than families of 10 spend on all of their kids. And some of those same people say kids are too expensive. Pets are good and created by God, but they are not people. They are not children. They cannot actually be your son or daughter. No matter how good the pet is or how well-trained, there are things you can never give to a pet that you could give to a child. Your business? Your home? Your wealth? Only a human being can inherit these, whether your child by birth or adoption. You can have pets and children, but if it is ever a choice between pets or children or between which takes priority, the right answer should be obvious.
There’s actually a similar problem with us and God. God is so far above us. The difference between us and God is a million times bigger than the difference between us and dogs – actually it’s infinite. In a purely natural state, we can’t be children of God, but unlike with pets, there is a solution and today’s feast shows that to us. Don’t get me wrong, people are always people and always have dignity and rights and we ought to love them, period. Still, just as we can take dogs, cats, and all kind of animals and train them… raise them up to do things impossible for them to do on their own, God takes us and raises us up to be more. But the difference is again more than a million times over.
For all our efforts, a dog can never become a person, a child, an heir. But, by Baptism, God actually changes us. We’re still human, but we actually become more. A human father has human children. God the Father has divine children. For us to be children of God, we must be divinized. And how can water and a few words do that? They couldn’t… until Jesus was baptized. When we are baptized, we are made holy. When Jesus was baptized, he made the water holy.
Jesus was always the Son of God, but every other human being is not a child of God when they are born. They are created by him, loved by him, and he wants them to get to heaven, but they are not a child of God in a specific way because they are not yet raised up to that basic level, that common ground that parents and children must have. Christmas is God becoming Man. The Baptism of the Lord is God showing mankind how to become like God. This is why the Father doesn’t actually call Jesus “Son,” until after his baptism and why at a baptism, we don’t pray the Our Father until the end. Baptism matters.
John the Baptist tells us, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” St. Paul reminds us that Jesus “saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” The Trinity is not the Old Man, His Son, and Their Bird. They are the three divine person in a single Godhead and all of them are part of our salvation. The Holy Spirit is not literally a bird – the dove is symbolic of peace. He is not literally fire – that is symbolic of light, transformation, and zeal. The Holy Spirit is literally God and literally a person. And when we are baptized, we are renewed and re-created. Hence our psalm sings to God, “When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.” By baptism, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, raised up, and given the capacity to not just be God’s beloved creatures, not just the sheep of his flock carried in his arms… but to be his beloved sons and daughters. By the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, we are raised up to that common ground needed to be his children. And just as children can inherit what pets cannot, so we can inherit what the unbaptized cannot: eternal life.
So God isn’t just speaking to Jesus when he says “you are my beloved Son,” he is speaking to you. I tell every family that angels are throwing a party at their child’s baptism even though they can’t see it. That’s true. God himself rejoices at that moment of spiritual adoption and he is immensely proud of you. He says to each child – and parent who agrees for that matter – “with you I am well pleased.”
Yet we know we all sin. God is not pleased with sin. Ever. But sin does not define us. Jesus died for us before we were baptized. Jesus redeemed us while we were still sinners. Baptism itself and the gift of the Holy Spirit are given by God’s mercy. And his mercy doesn’t just pretend sin is gone. It actually gets rid of it. Every Confession renews this moment from the Gospel. The priest says “your sins are forgiven, go in peace” and God the Father says “you are my beloved son, my beloved daughter, with you I am well pleased.” God the Father is proud of you when you go to Confession, not angry at what brought you there. And proud of every effort and step you take towards greater holiness.
St. Paul tells us that grace and the Holy Spirit are given so we can “live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age.” That takes work, but please don’t think that that is how you earn God’s love. It is his love – the Holy Spirit dwelling in you – that causes holiness, not your holiness that makes him love you. This life is not some cruel test to earn the Father’s love. It is a world broken, but redeemed. God’s love is freely offered and we learn to accept it, not earn it. So, accept it in your Baptism, accept in a genuine relationship with the Holy Spirit, accept it in Confession and know that before you ever did anything right, God already loved you, He still loves you. You are his beloved Son, His beloved Daughter. Accept his grace again so you can hear what He says from the day of your baptism “with you, I am well pleased.”