Fr Billy Swan
Dear friends. One of the amazing privileges of a priest or deacon is to administer the sacrament of baptism – to welcome another human being into the family of the Church and to witness this child or adult become a beloved child of God the Father and a beloved sister or brother or the Lord Jesus. For the one baptised, this is who they remain for life and for eternity. It is the defining moment of their entire lives. This is an awesome and beautiful mystery for us to think about and appreciate on this feast of the Lord’s baptism.
So too is one line from the rite of baptism that is remarkable. Just after the child’s name is announced by its parents, the priest or deacon marks the child on the forehead with the sign of the cross and says these words: ‘Billy, Mary, Aoife…I claim you for Christ our Saviour by the sign of the cross and invite your parents and godparents to do the same’. What extraordinary words! But what do they mean?
We adults who value our independence might react negatively to anyone having a claim to our lives. We might say: ‘My life does not belong to anyone else but to me. Therefore no one can claim it but myself’. But here at our baptism, we were claimed for someone. We were claimed for Christ. What this means is that my life and yours are ultimately not about us. It means that God who created us has first claim on our lives for his purposes and plans. Whether we realise it or not, our lives have been consecrated to him. We have been set apart, anointed and offered to God as servants of his kingdom. But again, we might object – ‘it sounds like I’m not free then! How can I be free while someone is claiming me?’
The answer to this question lies in the love of the one who claims us as his own, namely the Father who loves us. He loves us first and because he does, he claims us as his own and then sends us on mission. He is the one who knows us best and knows the secret of our deepest joy.
We see this is today’s Gospel account from Luke of Jesus’s baptism. There the Father’s words are declared: ‘You are my Son the beloved; my favour rests on you’. Only then does his mission begin. And because we became sons and daughters in Jesus at our own baptism, those words of the Father are also addressed to us: ‘Billy, Mary, Aoife…you are my child the beloved. My favour rests on you’. Then and only then can we understand how God’s love for us claims us for his own and for his own purposes. He loves us first, claims us as his own and only then sends us to do his will and to play our part. Love then is the key. The one who claims us loves us first and so our belonging to him is never a burden but a joy.
Friends, at a time when many are confused about who they are, our baptism takes us back to the truth. Our baptism reminds us that we matter, that we belong to someone and that we claimed by a Father who loves us. We are his own. This is the good news on this day.
Finally, in his Confessio, St Patrick marvels at the success of his ministry that he sees before him in ancient Ireland – ‘The Irish who before worshipped idols and unclean things have now become beloved sons and daughters of God through faith and baptism’.
Let us not go back to how we were before but stick to who we became with people like Patrick. Let us not be afraid of God’s claim of us for it is born out of his love that has made us his beloved sons and daughters.
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