The Baptism of the Lord Jan 2021
I have a file marked Personal – it has my birth certificate, passport, academic qualifications, medical records, and strangely, details of my ‘Christening’. It took place on the ninth June 1951 when I was two months old. . The church was 25, Kirschen Alle, Berlin, the Padre was Capt. Mahony R.A. There were 24 guests plus godparents. I was given my name. There is no account of the ceremony.
Saint Mark gives us an account of Jesus’ baptism – we know the place was the river Jordan, the baptiser’s was John and we know Jesus’s age. That’s it – no guest list or godparents or new name. Instead we get an account of the ceremony; when John baptised Jesus, the spirit descended, like a dove and the voice came of the Father declared “this is my Son”. The operations of the Trinity revealed.
There is a seismic difference between Jesus’ baptism and the ‘definitive moment’ of my Christian life. No ‘voice from heaven’ is recorded but I was baptised in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the control centre of baptism.
Can I ever grasp the power of this moment or do I remain largely unbaptised despite the ritual I un-knowningly went through? Can I move from it being an abstract idea to something alive and active in my life? It is easy to talk about sacraments, about how we should behave, but what about Christian life as lived.?
I recognise that it takes is a life time to surrender and relax into the mystery that is the Trinity.
A life time to recognise that we are invited into something extraordinary – into a world where God is supernaturally active, visibly and invisibly, both within and around us, beyond our capacity to notice or explain, control or manage – a world where the Holy Spirit is ‘formationally active’.
Whether we recognise it or not – whether we let it lie dormant as a certificate in a file or decide to accept the invitation to become participants in the life of the Trinity, baptism redefines our life as God’s gift to be lived from within the life of God as three persons – one God. But there is no coercion – there is just invitation.
It has taken me a life time to glimpse the possibility of letting go of control, and allowing the Trinity of God to become my grounding identity – the control centre of my life – baptised as I was into the personal life of God, on the 9th of June 1951.