Baptism of the Lord

Preached at the Basilica of the Assumption, Baltimore Maryland.

Readings: Isaiah  40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

St. Paul writes, “Beloved,
the grace of God has appeared…”
There is a certain kind 
of confusion concerning grace 
that we Christians can fall into,
a tendency to think of the appearing of grace
as a kind of supplemental help from God
popping up unexpectedly in our lives,
allowing us to overcome particular challenges.
We can think of grace sort of like 
a power-up in a video game:
something you come across 
that bolsters your powers 
so you can get past an obstacle,
like the Super Mushroom 

in Mario Brothers.

We might think that we get 
an initial cache of these power-ups
when we get baptized, 
and for us serious players—
for those who want to be able 
to complete the tasks and challenges
necessary to win the game—
it is important to find 
more power-ups along the way.
So we go to Confession 
and we receive the Eucharist,
or we get anointed when sick 
or, if we want to make 
our own power-ups
to share them with others,
maybe even get ordained.

I wouldn’t say that God 
never gives us power-ups—
in fact, the Church even has 
a Latin term for them: gratiae gratis data.
But these are gifts God gives us
for the benefit of the Church as a whole,
not as a means for us to complete the game ourselves.
The problem with the power-up view of grace
is that it can leave Jesus out of the picture
and make us masters of our own destinies:
life is our task to accomplish, 
our race to run, 
our quest to complete.
We are the players who will win the game,
if only we are clever enough to make use
of the Super Mushrooms 
that the game designer has left 
lying around for us.

We have confused notions about grace
because grace is confusing,
and it is confusing to us
because it is something far stranger
than any scheme that we human beings 
could ever imagine.
“The kindness and generous love 
of God our savior appeared,
not because of any righteous deeds 
we had done
but because of his mercy.”
What has appeared is not a Super Mushroom
but kindness and love and mercy
in the form of a person: Jesus Christ.
It has appeared

not because we have discovered
the sacramental power-ups 
that God has built into the game,
but because he who is

kindness and love and mercy
has come searching for us in our lostness
to tell us that our exile is ended
and our guilt has been expiated.
We are confused about grace

because God’s grace 
is something so strange
that we can scarcely fit it 
into how we think the world works,
because we have a hard time imagining
that love could be so freely given.

This great feast of the Baptism of Jesus
offers us occasion to ponder
the strangeness of grace.
John appears, Luke tells us,
“proclaiming a baptism of repentance 
for the forgiveness of sins.”
But why then should Jesus,
the sinless Son of God,
undergo a baptism of repentance?
What is he doing when he enters
the waters of the river Jordan?

Water itself is a powerful symbol.
It represents life and purity,
making things grow 
and cleansing from stain,
promising life and renewal. 
In the book of Exodus, 
God brings forth
life-giving water from the rock;
in John’s Gospel, Jesus says 
that he will give water 
to those who believe, 
which will become in them 
a spring gushing up to eternal life;
and in the book of Revelation
the water of life, bright as crystal, 
flows from the throne 
of God and of the Lamb.

Water is promise, but it is also peril.
This past fall we saw vividly
the perilous power of water
as hurricane Helene swept away
life and livelihood in western North Carolina.
In the creation story, 
God must muscle the waters into obedience, 
containing them within the oceans of the earth
and beyond the dome of the sky;
in the story of Noah and the great flood,
those same waters are unleashed
to purify the earth, but also to destroy it;
and in the Gospels Jesus rebukes the sea
that threatens to swamp the boat of his disciples.

When Jesus enters the waters of the Jordan
he enters into the promise and peril of human life;
he comes searching for us in our joys and our hopes,
in our fears and our anxieties,
he plunges into the waters of our humanity
not to plant a power-up for us to find,
to leave behind some grace that will help us
to navigate the game once he has gone,
but to make of us disciples and friends
who join him on his quest of promise and peril, 
the quest to manifest ever more 
the kindness and generous love of God.

This is why Will and Claire have brought Judah
to the waters of baptism on this morning.
We see all that we hope and all that we fear
perhaps most clearly when we look at our children,
so full of promise and so subject to peril;
and we bring our children for baptism
so that Jesus can meet them in the waters
of promise and peril 
and take them to himself,
so that they might be his own,
they might join him on his quest,
they might become heirs in him 
of hope eternal.

Grace can be confusing 
if we think of it as something we get
rather than someone we meet:
Grace is not a power-up but a person.
In the waters of baptism we meet Jesus
who has come to seek us there
so that we might enter into friendship with him,
not because we are kind or loving or merciful,
but because he is.
He offers himself to us without cost,
for which of us could pay the price 
of so great a gift?

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes 
take the water of life as a gift.”
And may God, 
who is kind and loving and merciful,
have mercy on us all. 

The Baptism of the Lord

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

Video

Why are you here?
On a cold winter’s day it is hard to imagine
that you could not have found some excuse 
to stay home rather than drag yourself to church. 
Yet here you are.
What brought you here?
Was it long ingrained habit;
going to church is simply what you do?
Was it fear of committing a mortal sin,
or perhaps a sense of obligation?
Was it perhaps an unnamed and unnamable yearning
to take part in some activity that breaks the spiraling cycle 
of labor and leisure that slowly works its way toward death?

Obviously I can’t ask anyone why they are not here
since…well…they’re not here.
But surveys of those who identify as Catholic 
do give us some idea of what people say
when asked why they no longer go to Mass. 
One survey of young adult Catholics, ages 18-35,
reports that 44% mention the sex abuse scandals,
42% mention the Church’s teachings on human sexuality,
and 33% mention the role of women in the Church.
None of this is particularly surprising,
since these are areas either of notable failure
on the part of Church leaders,
or where Church teachings are most at odds
with contemporary American culture.
And, alas, the number of those who are not here
seems to be growing.

But here’s the thing: 
I suspect that some of you might also feel 
difficulties within yourself 
concerning some Church teachings,
and I suspect almost all of you experience 
disappointment and disgust at the misdeeds
of some among the clergy.
And yet here you are.
Whatever difficulties or disappointments
we may feel with regard to the Church,
something has brought us here.
Maybe it was habit or fear or unnamable yearning,
but I believe that ultimately what has brought us here 
must be some good news 
that we have found here and nowhere else,
some glad tidings that can overcome,
or at least balalnce, 
our disillusionment and doubts
and even our lethargy.

What could that good news be?
Saint Paul proclaims in his letter to Titus:
“The grace of God has appeared, saving all…
The kindness and generous love
of God our savior appeared,
not because of any righteous deeds we had done
but because of his mercy.”
Notice what Paul is saying:
While we might like to think that God loves us 
because of some loveable quality that we possess
or because of some good deed we have done,
the truth is that God loves us
because of a quality that God possesses,
that quality that we call “mercy,”
and because of the great deed God has done,
taking flesh and dwelling among us 
in Jesus the Christ,
so that we might become 
“heirs in hope of eternal life.”

This is the good news,
the glad tidings that we have been celebrating 
in this Christmas season:
God is neither some far-off dictator
issuing our marching orders,
nor some vague gaseous presence
filling the leftover empty spaces of our lives,
but God is one who has become what we are
so that we might become what he is:
partakers of God’s own eternal happiness.
This is the good news that is at the heart
of the story of Jesus’ baptism.
Jesus comes, John the Baptist says,
to baptize us, “with the Holy Spirit and fire,”
to let his love burn away 
all that is frail,
all that is false.
He enters the river Jordan
to sanctify the waters of the earth
so that we might find in them, as St. Paul says,
“the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,”
so that heaven might be opened to us
and we might hear spoken to us
what Jesus heard spoken to him:
“you are my beloved… with you I am well pleased.”
And all this not because of anything we’ve done,
but simply because of who God is.

And if all of this is not true…
well then who could blame you 
for thinking your time is better spent
staying in your nice warm house.
But if this is true,
then everything changes.
If “the grace of God has appeared, saving all,”
if heaven is opened and the Spirit has descended,
if we are in fact God’s beloved,
then we have been remade,
and the world has been remade,
and nothing is the same.
Our disappointments and disillusion,
our doubts and difficulties
do not magically vanish,
but we can live with them,
we can grapple with them, 
with the glad tidings ringing in our ears:
heaven is open,
the Spirit is poured out,
God is with us,
we are beloved.

Why are we here?
We are here, not to be or do something
that will deserve God’s love,
but simply to let God love us,
to let that love have its way with us,
to let that love transform us.
We are here because love bids us welcome,
and who are we to refuse?

 

The Baptism of the Lord

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

Today’s celebration
of the Baptism of Jesus as a young man,
just a much as last week’s celebration
of the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus,
is the celebration of an “epiphany,”
a “manifestation,”
an event that shows forth and reveals
the identity of Jesus as God’s anointed,
the beloved Son with whom God is well-pleased.
Indeed, the Baptism of Jesus is a manifestation
not only of the identity of Jesus as God’s beloved,
but also of the mystery of the Trinity:
Jesus the eternal Son, born now in time,
upon who the Father sends the Holy Spirit
as he begins his time of public ministry.
The infinite, timeless dance of love that is God
shows itself in this particular historical moment,
and from this moment flows forth all that would follow:
Jesus’ proclamation of God’s reign,
the saving sacrifice of his passion and death,
the new dawn of his life-giving resurrection and ascension.

In our own baptisms,
we become sharers in this epiphany.
The sacrament of baptism is an epiphany of grace;
it shows the reality of God’s love
in a way that makes that love present
in this historical moment,
making us a new creation in Christ.
We become by grace what Jesus is by nature:
to everyone who rises from the waters of baptism God says,
“This is my beloved son.”
“This is my beloved daughter.”
Through baptism we share in the identity of Jesus
and become a part of that infinite, timeless love that is God.

But what does this really mean?
What does it actually look like
to become by grace what Jesus is by nature,
to live as a son or daughter of God?
I would suggest that to be baptized into Christ
is to be invited to live out the drama of our lives
against the backdrop of an infinite horizon.
We humans can be tempted to constrain our lives
within the comfortable confines of the knowable,
to find meaning in what we at least think we have in our control:
a career or a family,
an ethnic identity or a political ideology,
accumulated honors or achievements.
But to be baptized into Christ is to be called
beyond a life that we can control
into the wild adventure of the reign of God,
into the dizzying world-turned-upside-down
that bursts into our ordinary lives through faith in Jesus.
To be baptized into Christ is
to live within the mystery of God,
the infinite, timeless dance of love
that is the source of all life.

To put it another way,
we who have been baptized into Christ have become,
as St. Paul puts it in our second reading,
“heirs in hope to eternal life.”
If we Christians fail as Christians,
it is in hoping for too little.
We might think of the baptism of Jesus
not just as the epiphany of his divine identity
but as the epiphany of hope,
for through it we are invited to an infinite hope,
a hope for nothing less than everything.
As St. Paul wrote to the Christians of Corinth,
“everything belongs to you… the world or life or death,
or the present or the future: all belong to you,
and you to Christ, and Christ to God” (1 Cor. 3:21-23).
This hope for everything
is planted in the hearts of all who surrender
the controllable hopes that they have for lesser things.
It is not a hope only for the strong or the wise,
for the rich or the powerful,
but for each and every life newborn in Christ,
no matter how young or how old,
how famous or how obscure,
how blessed with joys or how afflicted with sorrow.
Each is a life of infinite value,
the life of a son or daughter of God,
a life that counts in the eyes of God.

To we who have been baptized God says,
hope for everything.
Hope for the reign of God to be made real in you
and live a life that risks radical love;
hope to know the saving passion of Jesus in your own life
and grow in compassion for all who suffer;
hope to know the new creation that triumphs in Christ’s resurrection
and live fearlessly in the face of opposition and misunderstanding;
hope that the you may one day join your voice
to the hymn of all creation,
and praise without ceasing the eternal love
in which we live and move and have our being.
For everything is yours,
and you are Christ’s,
and Christ is God’s.

The Baptism of the Lord

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14, 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

Today we pivot from our celebration of Christmas
to the beginning of what the Church calls “Ordinary Time”—
those ordinary “green” Sundays
that mark our everyday lives as Christians.
As we make this pivot we celebrate one final mystery
of Christ’s entry into our world:
the Baptism of the Lord,
the event that inaugurated
the public ministry of Jesus,
the time of his proclamation of God’s Kingdom,
the extraordinary ordinary time of his life
in which the sick were healed,
the dead were raised,
and the poor had the good news
proclaimed to them.
This is the story
that unfolds in our hearing
Sunday by Sunday
in the Ordinary Time
of our Christian lives.
But this first Sunday in Ordinary Time,
this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord,
is not simply when we begin
to tell the story of Jesus’ ministry,
it is also when we remember that
through our own baptisms
the story of Jesus
has become our story as well.

To be part of a family
is to “own” a set of family stories.
My family has stories of one group of ancestors
who emigrated from Scotland in colonial times
to seek their fortunes in the New World
and another group who emigrated from Germany
in the late 19th century
for reasons ranging
from avoidance of military service to romance.
We have stories of how my mother’s mother’s mother
ran a hotel all on her own after her husband died,
and how my father’s father ran a dancehall
that was actually the front for a speakeasy
during Prohibition.
We have stories of how my parent met at a party
the night before my father
went to sea for several months
and how when he returned
he called up my mother,
not sure she’d even remember who he was
(my presence here today
testifies to the fact that she remembered).

We all have these family stories that belong to us
or, it might be more accurate to say,
to which we belong.
We belong to these stories
because they shape who we are,
they shape how we see the world
and how we respond to what we see,
they constitute our identities as individuals
who are embedded in a communally shared history.
Even more that biological relationship,
it is these stories
that make us members of a family:
whether one is born into a family
or is adopted into it,
or marries into it,
we belong to a family
because we are heirs to its stories—
the happy and the sad,
the beautiful and the ugly.

But we are not only part
of our individual family stories.
We are also part of the story of the human family:
a story of joys and hopes,
of griefs and anxieties.
It is a story that is deeply marked by sin,
a story of war and poverty
and sickness and death.
It is a story
that has shaped how we see the world
and how we have responded to what we see,
and what we humans see
and how we respond
is often not very pretty.

But the good news
is that you do not have
to let that story define you;
this shared human history
need not be your destiny.
For in baptism you have become
part of a different story:
the story of the people of Israel
and of Jesus
and of his Church.
This is the story of the becoming present
in our human history
of the eternal love that is God:
Father, Son, and Spirit.
In the baptism of Jesus
we hear the voice of the Father
calling him beloved,
and see the Spirit of love
pouring out upon him
from the opened heavens.
And when we are baptized
in the name of the Father,
and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit,
that story becomes our story.

In our second reading today,
Paul writes to Titus that God
“saved us through the bath of rebirth
and renewal by the Holy Spirit,
whom he richly poured out on us
through Jesus Christ our savior,
so that we might be justified by his grace
and become heirs in hope of eternal life.”
We become heirs in hope of eternal life
because as members of God’s family
through the grace of baptism
we are inheritors of the story
of Israel, Jesus, and the Church,
the story of hope that is now our story,
a story that can shape how we see the world
and how we responded to what we see.

An early Christian author,
writing about Jesus’ baptism, said,
“At once ‘the heavens were opened to him.’
The world we see was reconciled
with the world that lies beyond our vision;
the angels were filled with joy;
earthly disorders were remedied;
mysteries were revealed;
enemies were made friends”
(attr. Hippolytus of Rome).
And so too at the baptism
of each and every Christian:
the heavens are opened
and our vision is no longer limited
to the often brutal facts of human history
that lie before our eyes;
heavenly powers rejoice as we are freed
from the grip of sin and self-seeking;
the mystery of divine love is made manifest
as hatred is healed and division overcome.
We leave behind in the waters of baptism
the old story of sin and death
and rise into the new story of Christ,
a story of Spirit and of fire,
a story of faith and of hope,
a story of the triumph of love over death.

As you renew your baptismal promises this morning,
as you live the Ordinary Time of your life in Christ,
own that story,
and let that story own you.

The Baptism of the Lord

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

What did Jesus find when he went down

into the waters of the Jordan river,

to baptized at the hands of John?

What awaited him as he plunged into the bath of repentance

to which John had called his fellow Israelites

in preparation for the coming day of judgment?

Certainly not the washing away of his own sins;

Luke has already informed us in the beginning of his Gospel

that the child born of Mary is holy, the Son of God.

There was no need for Jesus to repent,

to turn his life around.

What, then, took place that day in the river Jordan?

What happened to him in those waters?

Today’s celebration of the Baptism of the Lord

concludes the Christmas season,

and reminds us that for the past few weeks

we have been doing something more

than simply celebrating Jesus’ birthday.

The Baptism of Jesus continues

the “epiphany” or “manifestation” of Jesus to the world

that we celebrated last Sunday:

the Father’s voice from heaven

and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove

show to those present that Jesus is God’s beloved Son –

he truly is “Emmanuel,” God-with-us.

But there is an even deeper connection

between the Baptism of Jesus and the mystery of Christmas.

For the incarnation is not simply about God the eternal Son

taking on a human nature –

as stupendous as that event is –

but it is also about we humans

becoming, through Christ, partakers in God’s own nature.

The early Christian theologian Athanasius of Alexandria

wrote that Christ “was made human

that we might be made God" (De incarnatione no. 54).

This theme has echoed throughout the Christian tradition.

When the priest or deacon mixes water into the wine

at the preparation of the gifts at Mass

he prays, “may we come to share in the divinity of Christ

who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

The poet Gerard Manly Hopkins put it this way:

      In a flash, at a trumpet crash, 

      I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am.

This theme is sometimes called

the admirabile commercium or “wondrous exchange”:

God takes on human nature in all its frailty

so that we may take on the immortality of God’s own nature.

This is the event of our salvation that we celebrate at Christmas,

and it is also what we celebrate in the Baptism of Christ.

What did Jesus find when he went down into the water?

He found the waters of death that we had created.

And in those waters he found us:

drowned in the waters of chaos,

submerged in our alienation from God,

suffocated by our own unlovely sinful acts,

the dead bloated with the corpsegas
of pride and greed and envy.

And stripping himself of his immortality,

Jesus transformed those waters of death into waters of life,

exchanging his divine immortality for our human death,

so that we who were drowned in sin

might be raised with him to immortal life.

Through our baptism,

which St. Paul calls “the bath of rebirth,”

we become partners in that wondrous exchange.

In baptism the Holy Spirit poured out on Christ

is “richly poured out on us”;

in baptism God declares that we, like Christ,

are God’s beloved, on whom God’s favor rest;

in baptism, like Christ, heaven opened to us.

What did we find when we went down 

into the waters of baptism?

What awaited us in the bath of repentance?

We did not find death

but the robe of immortality

that Christ left for us there,

the glorious garment of which he stripped himself

so that we might be clothed in everlasting life.

Wrapped by Christ in that robe of light

we pray that we may be worthy of such a garment,

that we might live lives that reflect

the divine glory that has been given to us.

It was for this that God became a human being:

that God’s life and light might be reflected in us

who have become through grace 

what Christ is by nature:

beloved sons and daughters of God.

The Baptism of the Lord

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

“Are you saved?”

Have you ever had anyone ask you that?

It is a question that tends to make Catholics nervous.

Many years ago, when I was young and foolish,

I spent a summer in Alaska working at a seafood processing plant.

If that in itself is not sufficient evidence that I was young and foolish,

I should add that, at the end of my summer in Alaska,

I decided that I would hitchhike home to South Carolina.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time

(did I mention that I was young and foolish?).

And in many ways, it was very educational.

One of the things I learned

is that when traveling across a vast space, like the Canadian plains.

you can easily lose any sense of forward progress,

especially when it is your fifth consecutive hour

standing on the side of the highway with your thumb out.

I also learned that one group of people who habitually pick up hitchhikers

are Christians who are on the lookout for potential converts.

I met several of these folks on this particular journey,

but one who stands out in my mind was a Baptist minister

who picked me up somewhere outside of Medicine Hat, Alberta,

and took me all the way to Regina, Saskatchewan.

This was a journey of several hours

in which our conversation consisted pretty much of a single topic:

was I saved?

He would ask, and I would reply,

“Well, I don’t really know. I’d like to think I am trying.”

He would in turn reply, “If you were saved, you would know it,

because you would believe in Jesus as your personal Lord and savior.”

To which I would say,

“Well, I believe in God and Jesus, but I still don’t know if I will be saved.

A lot could happen between now and when I die.”

And he would respond, “If you’re saved, you know it.”

And so forth and so on,

from Medicine Hat through Swift Current and Moose Jaw, on to Regina –

a conversation going nowhere at great length.

So, are you saved?

This might seem to be a simple case

of a classic difference between Catholics and Protestants:

Protestants believe that they are saved by grace through faith,

once and for all in a decisive moment,

while Catholics believe you need to do something in addition to having faith,

something we call “good works,”

and that until your good works are totaled up at the end of your life

you can’t really be sure of your salvation.

But if this were really what we believe,

then why would we be reading in our second reading today

that “the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared,

not because of any righteous deed we had done but because of his mercy”?

In fact, it has always been the teaching of the Catholic Church

that our salvation depends totally upon God’s grace:

we are saved simply through the generous love of God

and not through any righteous deed – any good work – that we might do.

So why are we so nervous about the question “are you saved?”

Why can’t we rest easy with simply answering “yes”?

I would like to think that our Catholic anxiety

over this question of salvation

grows out of an at least implicit awareness

that the real question with regard to salvation

is not “what should I do?” but “who should I be?”

The question is not whether I should perform

some sort of inward, mental action called “having faith,”

or some other sort of outward, physical action called “performing a good work,”

that God will reward by saving me.

The question is rather one about who it is that I am in the eyes of God.

The question is whether the kindness and generous love of God

is transforming me into someone

who can live fully in God’s presence,

and thus share in the eternal life that is God.

Our faith is that the answer to this question is “yes”;

we believe that God’s grace is transforming us

into what Paul calls “heirs in hope of eternal life.”

But note that we are heirs “in hope” –

our certainty is the certainty of hope,

which is quite different

from the kind of certainty we might have in science or mathematics.

We have a keen awareness of ourselves as works-in-progress,

people on a journey,

and whatever assurance we have of salvation

is found in our faith

that God’s grace is sufficient to bring that work to completion,

to guide our journey to its destination.

Paul singles out baptism as a key moment

in our becoming heirs in hope of eternal life.

In Jesus’ own baptism, recounted in our Gospel today,

the Holy Spirit descends on him

and a voice speaks from heaven,

“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Likewise for us, baptism is what Paul calls “the bath of rebirth”

in which we are reborn with a new identity

as God’s sons and daughters,

an identity that we do not fashion for ourselves,

but that is bestowed on us by God,

through the Spirit of renewal that, as Paul puts it,

“is richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior.”

But the grace that God gives through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit

takes time – a lifetime – to work itself into our bones.

Our new identity typically takes shape slowly within us:

it is a journey far longer

than the journey from Medicine Hat, Alberta, to Regina, Saskatchewan.

The very way in which the Church celebrates the sacraments of initiation

recognizes this.

In the case of children,

the identity given in baptism must be nurtured and developed

through the other sacraments,

not just until adulthood, but over the course of a lifetime.

For those who are baptized as adults,

their new identity is not just nurtured after baptism

but must also be prepared for prior to baptism.

This is the point of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults or RCIA:

to assist adults who desire baptism or the other sacraments of initiation

in preparing themselves to live the new identity God will give them.

Paul puts this rather dramatically

in terms of God “training us to reject Godless ways and worldly desires.”

We might put it, somewhat less dramatically,

in terms of those who ask for baptism

seeking to live a life of greater spiritual depth,

a life more deeply rooted in God’s love and mercy,

given to us in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit,

a new life that may well involve unlearning an old way of life.

In the Rites of Christian Initiation we the Church

assist them with our prayers and our love

as they undertake the arduous task

of learning to live lives of faith, hope and love.

For all of us, the task of living the identity given to us through grace in baptism

is one that is on-going.

We should ask God each day in prayer

to make us more faithful, more hopeful, and more loving.

Sometimes, it is true, we can see little in the way of forward progress,

not unlike hitchhiking across the Canadian plains,

yet in our faith we trust that God has already given us

the grace to finish the journey,

the grace that is gradually transforming us into those

who can live fully in God’s eternal presence.

“Are you saved?”

Let us answer with the confidence of the early Christian poet who wrote:

"I trusted, consequently I was at rest;

because trustful is the one in whom I trusted.

And immortal life embraced me, and kissed me.

And from that life is the Spirit which is within me.

And it cannot die because it is life" (Odes of Solomon 28:1-3, 7-8).