Baptism of the Lord 2025
Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14, 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
I may have told you this before. If so, put it down to my being in my anecdotage, and offer it up for the Holy Souls.
At St. Gregory’s, Preston, there are—or, at least, there were, when I was there from 1990 to 1995—two cribs, a conventional one in the side chapel containing all the familiar figures, and a simple wooden one under the altar comprising just the three figures of the Holy Family. One morning during Christmastide, I went into church to pray before Mass, and as I did so, I flicked a couple of lights on.
Here, I need to add that there is also a huge wooden crucifix which hangs above the altar. As I walked into church, I observed that the shadow cast by this crucifix fell across the crib under the altar, and I suddenly grasped the significance of this feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The shadow of the Cross falls across the crib—and the Baptism is the hinge point between them. (REPEAT)
What does that mean? From the moment of His birth, Jesus the Saviour is pre-ordained to die on the Cross, and the Baptism is the point at which He begins to fulfil His destiny, to move from the crib to the Cross.
Let us look at the crib first. The scene is already one of rejection. There was no room for the Holy Family at the inn, and so they must dwell as outsiders, beyond the walls within which they might have expected to find welcome. Similarly, Jesus is to die outside the walls of the city, rejected by the very Jerusalem which He had come to save.
There are a few who will come to honour Him at His birth, the Jewish shepherds and the Gentile Magi, just as a few will stand by His Cross, whilst the general mass of the people remains unwelcoming, indifferent or hostile. Among the Jewish people, it is the poor and lowly, in the form of the shepherds, who come to adore Him, as it is always the anawim the poor of the Lord, who recognise Him crucified and risen. Even when the wealthier Magi appear, one of their gifts is myrrh, traditionally used to anoint bodies for burial, as the women were to bring spices to the tomb. It has been suggested that among those spices might have been that myrrh, kept lovingly by Our Lady since the wise men’s visit.
Move forward forty days, and we see the infant Jesus presented in the Temple, His Father’s house, which He was later to liberate from the activities of the buyers and sellers, but whose destruction He would prophesy, as it was to be replaced by the true Temple of His crucified and risen body. There, Simeon’s own prophecy would foretell the child’s future role as a sign of contradiction, or a sign that is rejected, literally “a sign that is spoken against”, which is the original meaning of contradiction.
In all of these ways, then, the shadow of the Cross falls across the crib: the scene of the Lord’s birth is already marked by signs of His death. In what sense, though, is the Baptism the hinge point between crib and Cross?
The Baptism is the hinge in that it sets the process in motion, marking the point at which Jesus moves from the one towards the other. The liturgical hymn from the Divine Office expresses this move:
“When Jesus comes to be baptised, He leaves the hidden years behind,
The years of safety and of peace, to bear the sins of all mankind”.
In accepting baptism, the Lord sets out on the road to the Cross, His descent into and rising from the water foreshadowing His descent into and rising from the tomb.
And so the weekly, indeed daily, question arises: what about us? As St. Paul tells us in the course of the Paschal liturgy, “when we were baptised in Christ Jesus, we were baptised in His death” and Paul also unites our own descent into and rising from the water at our baptism with Our Lord’s descent into and resurrection from the tomb. All of this we can face with confidence and without fear, because, like Jesus, we are anointed with the Holy Spirit; and to us, as to the Lord, the words of the Father are addressed: “You are my Beloved Child. With you I am well pleased”.
