Today we end the Christmas season with the Baptism of the Lord. This is Christ’s vocation story in which he hears “the voice within”—revealing to him his mission and identity: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Christ, being fully human like us, searched for and gradually understood His mission. This first dramatic, direct and clear revelation—a beatific vision—of his mission was an interior event. This was made public later in the Transfiguration, in which Christ the Beloved Son was revealed to Peter, James and John on what is believed to be Mt. Tabor.
From this beatific vision in today’s baptism story, Christ dedicated himself to this mission.
This moment in Christ’s life represents many things. One, it is a tribute to his parents who guided him and gave him the freedom to search for and commit to his mission.
Two, it gives us an insight in the person of Christ, the one we are to know more, love more and follow more.
Three, it assures us that there are or will be moments of great clarity in our life.
Environment of care
One of the primary responsibilities of parents is to provide their children with an environment where they can discover their identity and mission. Writer Chris Lowney calls this an environment of care and respect, of greater love than fear, a caring environment.
Lowney explains that providing people with opportunities to achieve their full human potential is part of this environment. This includes allowing them to fail, not to plan for failure, but not to fear failure and to learn from it when it comes.
Joseph Califano, a former United States Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, put it simply yet powerfully in his 1990s speech to high school teachers: “Teach your students to try. And encourage them all to experience the exhilaration and exhaustion of spending themselves in a worthy cause. If you do that, then whatever their careers, they will be happier and the world will be a better place for what you’ve taught them.”
Mary and Joseph gave Christ this kind of environment. We saw it two Sundays ago in the Feast of the Holy Family, in the story of the Finding in the Temple. We saw this in the stories of the Christmas season, in which Mary was repeatedly perplexed by what her son’s future held, yet did not shield him from it all. Rather, she kept “these things in her heart,” discerning to understand.
Such an environment in the family is what parents and teachers, mentors and guardians who have an influence on the formation of the young can help create, a caring environment where we can love them into excellence.
Loving them into excellence is inspiring them and giving them the freedom to seek, hear and follow their calling, discover their identity and mission, and dedicate themselves to it. This was what Mary and Joseph did to Christ that brought him to this moment of hearing the voice within: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
If Mary and Joseph “taught Christ to try and encouraged him to experience the exhilaration and exhaustion of spending himself in a worthy cause,” we now see how Christ dedicated Himself to this cause or mission.
From here on, it was a single-minded dedication and devotion to this identity and mission to being the Beloved Son and to be pleasing to the Father. We saw this throughout the three years of His public life. We saw how Christ stuck to the plan, so to speak.
Prayer and discernment
For this, let us look at three things, among many, from which we can learn. First, He constantly prayed and discerned as he lived out what His Father wanted Him to do.
Second and third, with prayer and discernment, He was not distracted by success, and He did not fear the price He had to pay to do what God wanted Him to do.
Amid all His work and activities, He always found time to pray and discern, getting up early to go to a deserted place to be in solitude with His Father. In all such moments, we saw how these bore fruit in action.
When His disciples found Him in prayer and asked Him to go back to the adoring crowds to do more of His teaching, healing and miracles, Christ said, “to other towns I must go” to proclaim the Good News of his Father’s Kingdom. Success did not distract Him from His mission was.
In the Agony in the Garden, the only moment we are given a view of what goes on in His prayer and discernment, Christ clearly stood by his choice, knowing fully well the price He had to pay.
The Baptism of Our Lord gives us the assurance that we are baptized into the same life, the same journey as Christ had on earth; that we too will hear the voice within and know our identity and mission.
We are all called to the excellence of being beloved sons and daughters of the Father, and if we listen, we always will hear the voice within. —CONTRIBUTED