January 8, 2015
The following is a homily based on the Scripture readings for Sunday, Jan. 11.
A story that floats around the Internet: A wealthy business man invites eligible men who work for him to his mansion on Long Island. The brokers and traders are gathered around a large pool, drinking and enjoying exquisite snacks. The only strange thing is this: the pool is filled with alligators. Eventually the businessman appears, with a briefcase on his left and a beautiful woman on his right. He tells the gathered men: whoever is the first one to swim through that pool of alligators can have either this briefcase with the million dollars or my beautiful daughter for marriage. He no sooner stopped speaking when he sees one of those young men swimming frantically through the pool as alligators snap at him. He finally makes it across the pool. The businessman says: That was amazing! I can’t believe it! What do you want, the million dollars or my beautiful daughter? The swimmer says: I don’t want your million dollars, and I don’t want your daughter. I want the guy who threw me into the pool!
I love this story because I think many Catholics behave as if they were thrown into the pool – you know, their parents had them baptized and now they are stuck with being Catholics. They feel they had not choice, that things were chosen for them. Even more, it’s no secret that millions of Catholics no longer think of themselves as Catholic, and the majority do not attend Mass on Sunday. I remember one priest telling me about a young man who went on a retreat at an Evangelical Church; the next weekend he told his priest that for the first time, at the retreat, he gave himself to Jesus. The priest asked the young man: “What did you think you were doing when you made confirmation?”
Would we choose to be baptized again? Would we choose to be disciples of Jesus Christ? Would we choose to place him at the center of our lives? Or do we think our faith was something foisted on us? That we mostly go through the motions but have never been converted?
Baptism is accepting the life of Jesus as one’s own. How that happens, and how that continues in life, varies in a million details. Some people jump into the baptism font at twenty years old, and two years later you wouldn’t know it. Catholics and many other Christian communities baptize our children so that they will grow up in an environment of conversion, so that they will always know God’s love and grace, so that the foundation of discipleship can be built from the earliest years. The big risk is this: perhaps we won’t appreciate it, and perhaps our baptism never comes to maturity.
Don’t tell me you haven’t accepted your baptism if you come to Mass. Don’t tell me you haven’t put Jesus at the center of your life if you come to Holy Communion, if you receive his body and blood inside you. Every time we bless ourselves with holy water, we are affirming our baptism. Every time we hear the Scripture, we are exercising our discipleship. Every time we let God speak in the depths of our heart, we are hearing the Father as Jesus taught us to. Our Catholic problem isn’t that there is no conversion; our Catholic problem is that we have barely begun to live the conversion that fills our lives.
The Christmas season ends with today’s feast. Jesus is born, but not to stay in a stable; Jesus is revealed, but not to be stared at by Magi. Jesus is baptized, but not because he was sinful or needed a bath. Jesus is baptized for mission, to be the chosen Son, the beloved, who hears his Father perfectly, who acts in the Holy Spirit, and tears open the heavens to bring them down to earth. You and I are baptized into that same mission: to bring the kingdom to our homes, living and learning as disciples; to bring the kingdom to our workplaces, witnessing to the values of the kingdom in the world; to bring that kingdom to hearts which are all too empty because they have not yet encountered Jesus Christ and been overwhelmed by his love.
Often we think of faith as choosing – did we choose Jesus or his way of life? But before that it is something else: it is being chosen by God, being loved from eternity, and being invited to live in that love as daughters and sons, along with Jesus. Before anything, it is God’s sheer grace. Yes, God chose us, you and me. But God chooses us so that we can show how God would choose, and transform, the world.