Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Baptism of Our Lord. This brings to an end the season of Christmas. The Church recalls Our Lord's second manifestation or epiphany which occurred on the occasion of His baptism in the Jordan. Jesus descended into the River to sanctify its waters and to give them the power to beget sons of God. The event takes on the importance of a second creation in which the entire Trinity intervenes. The Fifteenth Day of Christmas.
Baptism of Jesus:
St. Matt. iii. 13 - 17
Our Lord bids farewell to His holy Mother; makes His way to the Jordan; is baptized by St. John amid a crowd of sinners, and is proclaimed by the Voice from Heaven the Beloved Son of God.
I. For thirty years Jesus had dwelt in sweet companionship with His holy Mother. Never since the world began had there been any intercourse so full of unspeakable delight as that of Jesus and Mary. Now the time had come to break the bond: it was like the tearing asunder of their loving hearts for them to part. Yet Christ goes on His way with the greatest cheerfulness and joy: for it was the will of God that He should forsake His Mother, and the motto of His life was: "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O my God."
2. It is the same Divine guidance that leads Him to the Jordan, to be baptized among sinners, just as if He, the Lamb of God, were Himself a sinner. Yet He never hesitates for an instant. It was the will of God, and, therefore, it is His greatest joy to do what men would esteem so misleading and ill-judged, so fatal to the success of His future Mission. Do I thus implicitly obey the will of God?
3. Obedience and humility are the surest way of winning honor from God. He loves to exalt the humble, to pour Divine gifts upon the obedient. A Voice from Heaven declares Him Who had thus humbled Himself to be the well-beloved Son of God. The Holy Spirit descending in visible form proclaims wisdom to be the special privilege of the obedient.
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