Baptism: Union with the Son and Servant of God – Baptism Of The Lord Feast Day – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; January 12, 2025

“For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.”

Everything that has to do with the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is for us men and for our salvation. In today’s Gospel we hear the Father’s voice identifying Jesus, You are my beloved Son, but in the prophecy it was here is my servant whom I uphold. The Son of God by becoming man became a “servant,” a “slave” even. In the words of St. Paul, Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Eph 2:6-7)

Any created being, in relation to God the Creator, has the status of being a servant; intelligent beings, angels and men, are meant to be knowing and willing servants, though there are also the rebels, who follow the motto of Satan, “I will not serve.”

Yet, there is a way in which, scarcely possible to explain, by becoming man the Son of God became more completely a “servant” than any other human being.

You see, each one of us was created to have our own personal life. We are meant to direct that life to God, that life finds its fulfillment and happiness in God, and through achieving that goal we give glory to God. Directing our life to God also means opening out to others in love and service. Still, we each have our own individual existence and purpose.

One typical way this finds expression is in the desire that a young man or woman has to get married and start a family, a family of their own, a life of their “own”, yet a life of their “own” that becomes inseparable from spouse and children, whom they love and serve. There is nothing that belongs to this world that is so beautiful, but we are made for something beyond this world.

As for the man, Jesus Christ – it is hard to express this in words – he has no existence or purpose apart from God because he is the very Son of God. As a man he exists purely for God’s glory, which means also “for us men and for our salvation,” to restore us to the glory of God. During his earthly life he lived, breathed, ate, slept, thought, felt, and acted purely “for us men and for our salvation.” He was completely devoid of “ego” and completely “for others” in a way that would be impossible for a pure human being. He accomplishes our salvation, in the first place, by giving glory, as a man, the head of redeemed humanity, to his Father.

Purely for us men and for our salvation, Jesus came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, so that by means of water we might be baptized with the fire of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is represented at once by the fire of divine charity, the cleansing and life-giving water, and the peace of the dove.

Jesus’ baptism reveals to us who he is and what he does and what we become in him.

He is the beloved Son of God, who has become man, the man upon whom the Holy Spirit descends in his fullness, who dies and rises again from the dead (represented by his immersion into and emersion from the water) to reconcile us to God and open for us the gates of heaven, closed by Adam’s sin.

United to his death and resurrection through our baptism, we were cleansed of sin, reborn in Christ as true children of God, living by the life of grace in the Holy Spirit, making our pilgrim way to our heavenly homeland, capable now of following Christ through the gates of death to eternal life.

While the other Gospels make it clear that St. John the Baptist was a witness to the dove and the voice, in today’s Gospel St. Luke gives us a curious detail: Jesus himself experienced these things, after his baptism, while praying.

When the man Jesus prays, we see an example of what it meant for the Son of God to empty himself. God to whom prayer is directed, prays as a man. God who answers prayer, as a man humbly begs help from God. God, who by his providence guides and directs all things, as a man humbly seeks guidance from God.

United to Christ through baptism, we are made part of his mystical Body, the Church, of which he is the Head.

St Augustine writes: “No greater gift could God have given to men than in making His Word, by which He created all things, their Head, and joining them to Him as His members: that the Son of God might become also the Son of Man, one God with the Father, one Man with men; so that when we speak to God in prayer for mercy, we do not separate the Son from Him; and when the Body of the Son prays, it separates not its Head from itself: and it is one Savior of His Body, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who both prays for us, and prays in us, and is prayed to by us. He prays for us, as our Priest; He prays in us, as our Head; He is prayed to by us, as our God. Let us therefore recognize in Him our words, and His words in us.” (Exposition of the Psalms, 86.1)

Christian prayer is prayer in the Body of Christ, sharing in and following the example of Christ himself, the head of the Body. As Christ, emerging from the waters of baptism first of all prayed, so we, having been baptized in Christ, must first of all pray. As prayer was for Christ the human expression of his divine relation to the Father, so prayer is the expression of our relation to Our Father in heaven, through, with, and in Christ. Prayer is the chief activity of the child of God.

Since Christ the man, while praying, heard – not for the first time – the voice of the Father saying, You are my beloved Son, it is through prayer that we not only believe, but truly learn and discover what it means to be a child of God in Christ; it is through prayer that we learn to appropriate the identity that has been given to us in our baptism. Likewise, as Christ the man, while praying, saw the Holy Spirit descend upon him, it is through prayer that we open our life to the action of the Holy Spirit.

Like the Son of God, we must become also servants of God. We cannot be servants so completely as the man, Jesus Christ, but we must more and more live for others.

Returning to marriage, in which a young man and woman seek a life of their own, this beautiful reality of the human world, it really only works when husband lives for wife and children and wife lives for husband and children.  It is quite amazing: a man and woman get married and then after the wedding the cold water gets dashed in their face as they realize that their life is no longer their own. They are quickly confronted with the choice, retreat into their own egoism or embrace the death of self whereby they learn to live for others. Actually, the choice is not made once for all, but is a path that must be walked, day after day, in matters big and small.

The lesson that is often taught in such a blunt fashion in marriage is a lesson that everyone needs to learn in every state of life because it is simply the Christian way, the way of Christ.

Let us return to the example of the Son of God made man. His is a humanity that has been totally instrumentalized by the divine purpose. That is why it is better to say “Jesus Christ” than “Jesus the Christ”. Jesus names the person, Christ, the mission or office, but the person is so wholly identified with the mission and office, that they form a single reality with a single name.

When we think of how we instinctively rebel at the thought of being a servant, a slave, a mere tool, we might then think that the life on earth of the man, Jesus Christ, was pretty dismal, even if he is the Son of God. This is a man who was born to give his life on the Cross and knew it from the beginning. (cf. He 10:5-7) That sounds pretty horrific. It could seem almost like the agony in the garden, stretched throughout his whole life.

That is why the Father’s voice, You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased, is so important, even for him. At the summit of his human soul he always beheld the face of the Father, (cf. CCC 473-474) but after the baptism he was given a vision that touched him in the very depths of his sacred humanity. Such refreshment was part and parcel of his human life. In another place, St. Luke recounts Jesus rejoicing in the Holy Spirit. (cf. Lk 10:21) This is an important detail; we must not think that it was a one-time event; certainly, his seeing the Holy Spirit descend upon him in bodily form also involved this rejoicing in the Holy Spirit. What must have been the thrill of joy throughout the human soul of the Son of God?

All this too was for us men and for our salvation. So also for us, in the measure that we give ourselves over to our baptismal mission, giving ourselves over to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, living not for ourselves, but for God and for others, discovering our identity as children of God, the Holy Spirit will also give us to know, even in this life, the joy of being children of God.

None of us lives to himself, and none dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. (Rm 14:7) There is no joy like the joy of belonging to the Lord.