We Are Born Again

Posted: 10 Jan 2009 01:00 AM CST
Is 42:1-4, 6-7 / Mk 1:7-11

When Jesus was baptized, he was baptized in “water made holy by the one, who was baptized.” As we are celebrating the close of the Christmas season today, it is more-than-fitting the Church should give us this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

When we are baptized, a similar election and declaration comes from God the Father as He adopts us through the Sacrament of Baptism. While we may never hear — here — the Father say “You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased”, the fact that we ARE baptized means He has made that declaration.

Through Jesus, the Father has declared you worthy of adoption. Don’t let anything leave you feeling as though you are not worthy enough. I know those kinds of tapes that play in the back of your mind and recesses of your heart: “if God really knew what a mess I am, He wouldn’t want to hang around with me,” or some sort of thought.

Jesus’ Baptism is the pattern for ours — including that declaration from the Father! That is one of the reasons Jesus was baptized: that we might see how beloved of children we are to the Father.

Christmas celebrates that “unto us a child is born.” The end of the Christmas season celebrates our being “born again of water and the Holy Spirit.”
“Gloria in Excelsis Deo:” we are born again.