“WATER/JESUS WASHES”
Saint Mark 1: 4-11
The Baptism of our Lord: 8 January Anno Domini 2017
Father Jay Watson SSP
Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar have come and gone—both in time and in Liturgical remembrance. But The Lord’s continuing and ongoing revelation to the Gentiles continues. His saving presence endures. His Church will not fall. His return for His Saints, to bring them with Him where He goes, is imminent.
John did baptize in the wilderness and he did preach the baptism of repentance for, or to, the remission of sins. He did this by the authority of The Lord, and The Holy Ghost worked in and through John. The Baptist’s actions were The Lord’s! So, it was and so it is. The Holy Ghost is ever present and active in the Office of The Holy Ministry—the one established by The Lord—The God/Man Christ Jesus. Reject the Office and you reject Christ. Reject His established Church and you reject Christ. The Holy Trinity is not impressed with the “faith feelings” you have in your heart when you stay at home with your Gideon palm pal and pretend to be part of ‘The Lord’ when in reality you’ve enshrined yourself in the monstrance of your heart. Individualism is the curse of Christ’s flock and as it manifests itself in pride and self, was the original sin. Satan convinced Eve to reject The Church, The Word of God, and to rely on her own subjective, individual “reading” of the situation… “did God really say?” Individualism leads to modernism and progressivism, and thus, is the synthesis of all heresies.
Why do people not gather at the behest of The Spirit every Lord’s Day around the free and bountiful gifts of God? They don’t think they need to. They think as long as they “have God in their hearts, and do their best,” everything will be fine.
One usually doesn’t think one’s own sins are all that bad—thus the crucifix to remind their deluded old Adam what the least little sin required, caused, and means. Most sectarians eschew the crucifix for plain and bare “art,” or, nothing at all…maybe just a flag of Baal or people on a choir riser---Narcissus, man worshipping man rather than being fed by God. Why do people reject the Paraclete’s “calling by The Gospel” on Mass day? They don’t actually believe in Jesus’ Body and Blood being present for their repentance; for the remission of sins! Is Baptism the Sacrament of The Altar? Yes and no. The Sacraments are not the same, not identical…certainly not in their earthly means/makeup. But both The Holy + Washing and The Holy Feeding are Christ—the enfleshed God/Man forgiving you and placing you IN Him. In The Eucharist, He places His own Body and Blood into your mouth. In your Holy + Baptism He placed you into His own Body and Blood—His side/heart, yes, but also into His Body The Church. Not your home “devotions” or some touchy/feelie “Bible Study” but into His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
2,000 years ago, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and Scribes rejected the gifts of God, disbelieving that forgiveness, salvation, and life could be freely given out by, through, in, and with The Nazarene. Today, the same disbelief in The Word—MADE FLESH continues.
The Rabbi from Galilee was washed by John in the Jordan not because He needed to be but because He thus washed in His own sinless and spotless Body the whole of fallen Adam—all sinful flesh was being cleansed initially, and inaugurally, pointing towards the ultimate washing in His Blood at the Tree of New Life planted on Golgotha’s bone-ridden soil. When The Word of God touches an earthly substance in concrete, and in verbal declaration to forgive sins, IS becomes IS— “for you.” Jesus sanctified the river pointing to His making the 8-sided font of your rebirth Holy and fully incorporating. It’s a tiny font—as the way is hard and the gate narrow. But you do not traverse the road by your own actions, nor do you climb into the feast by your will and knowledge. You are passively carried to the womb of the church and you passively receive from the Lord’s hands His Body and Blood.
“No man cometh unto The Father but by Me” [Jn. 14.6] speaks The Lord. Framed between the two candles of Christ’s Holy sacrificial altar, His crucifix shining down upon it as the true Christmas star, stands first the gate-way entry of His cleansing death, burial, and resurrection of your New Creation. And secondly, upon the funeral pall of His resurrected rocky tomb, stands His Chalice and Ciborium—His actual Body and true Blood. Reject these and, woe, uncertainty, and sadness follow. Being “Baptized” by Him and His Holy Ghost, and your sins are loosed and you are clothed not with camel’s hair and a girdle of skin, but with The God/Man’s love and Peace. Receive His Supper the Way He deigns it, and you receive The Way—you Have God making His temple in your soul.
Receive Him and there comes a voice from heaven saying: “You are My beloved Children, in whom I Am, well pleased.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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