This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
What we see at the Baptism of Jesus, momentous as it is, is the tip of the iceberg. We can well focus on the supernatural manifestations, whereby the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus visibly in the form of the dove, and God the Father proclaims Him His Son, in whom He is well pleased.
But there is a lot of depth to what is going on here. Per usual, the Old Testament sheds deep light on what is happening in the broader context of the economy of salvation, as we see in our first reading.
Of course, we know that Jesus was born to carry out the mission of our salvation–for no other purpose. Still, it is at the critical moment of His Baptism–which He with good reason insists upon, in the face of the Baptist’s protests–that Jesus as man formally accepts this mission, the mission of salvation described for us in the first reading. Or rather, as the second reading from Acts describes, He accepts His anointing for this mission. It is God the Father who does the anointing, and the oil of anointing is the Holy Spirit Himself. By accepting God’s will for Him to be baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus formally accepts His own divine anointing for His mission of salvation.
Why at this moment does the Father decide to manifest Himself, and state that He is pleased with His Son? As Jesus says elsewhere, the Father is always pleased with Him, because Jesus always does what pleases Him. But here, we may confidently infer that the Father is specifically saying that He is particularly pleased with what Jesus has just done, for the first time formally as God-Man, in taking on His difficult mission.
Following Christ, all the way into eternal life, is costly. He demands from us core transformation, for the sake of radical exaltation. But today we espy one consequence of our acceptance of His invitation to this radical gift of self to Him that may otherwise elude us. Since in His saving act, Jesus has made of us adopted children of God, we inherit with Him the ability to please the Father by accepting His mission for us, by accepting His will.
And so, we may confidently affirm that when we say “yes” to the life that God is asking from us, the Father, in all His solemnity, is saying of us as well that He is “well pleased.”
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Imagine one of the moments when it was challenging for you to say “yes” to God, and imagine the true joy that your “yes” brought to God the Father, the sovereign of the universe. Marvel that He would ordain things such that He could derive authentic joy from you, and ask Him never to let you be parted from the path of pleasing Him.
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