“Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased . . .”

The word Trinity does not ap-
pear even once in the New
Testament. Of course, that
doesn’t mean that the New
Testament doesn’t teach us a lot about
the Trinity. Today’s Gospel Reading is
a case in point.
In St. Matthew the Evangelist’s
description of the Baptism of the Lord
Jesus, all three Persons of the Trinity
reveal Themselves. God the Father
reveals Himself only by speech. We
know that He’s the Father because
He identifies Himself in terms of His
relationship with His Son, declaring,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I
am well pleased.”
God the Holy Spirit also reveals
Himself in terms of His relation-
ship with God the Son. After Jesus’s
baptism, “the heavens were opened
for him, and he saw the Spirit of God
descending like a dove and coming
upon him.” We might wonder what
St. Matthew means by describing the
Holy Spirit’s descent as being “like a
dove.” The first quality suggested by
this metaphor is gentleness, a quality
that through the Holy Spirit’s descent
is related to Jesus.
In today’s Gospel reading, St. John
the Baptist alludes to the fact that
Jesus does not need to be baptized.
In fact, Jesus no more needed to be
baptized than He needed to descend
from Heaven to earth. He did both
for the same reason: “for us men and
for our salvation,” as we profess in the
Creed.
The whole of today’s feast reveals to
us the gifts that the Christian receives
through the Sacrament of Baptism.
Simply put, all of these gifts are shares
in the life of the Most Holy Trinity.
Yet some of them could be described
as negative; others, positive. That
is to say, the gifts that God gives in
Baptism both destroy and build (see
CCC 1262).
The former are more simple and,
in a sense, less important. When
a human sinner is baptized, all sin
within that person is destroyed: both
the Original Sin that is inherited, and
any actual sins committed by that
individual.
But that washing away of moral and
spiritual dirt is only a preparation.
God has something
even greater in store for
the baptized Christian:
in fact, a new creation
(see CCC 1265).
The relationships that we
see the Father and the Holy
Spirit sharing with the Son in today’s
Gospel reading are also shared with
the Christian through baptism. God
the Father adopts the Christian as
His own child “in Christ.” Likewise,
the Holy Spirit bestows His fruits and
gifts upon the baptized “in Christ.”
More specifically, the Catechism
notes three key ways, among others,
in which God builds up the Christian
through Baptism. The first is “sanc-
tifying grace, the grace of justifica-
tion,” which enables the Christian “to
believe in God, to hope in him, and
to love him through the theological
virtues” (CCC 1266).
The second is membership in the
Mystical Body of Christ: the Church.
As one member of Christ’s Body, the
Christian shares in Jesus’s priestly,
prophetic, and kingly missions. The
Catechism specifically notes that
“Baptism gives a share in the common
priesthood of all believers” (CCC
1268), expanding upon St. Peter’s ex-
hortation: “like living stones be your-
selves built into a spiritual house, to
be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual
sacrifices acceptable to God through
Jesus Christ” (1 Pt 2:5).
Unfortunately, this “common priest-
hood,” sometimes called the “baptis-
mal priesthood,” is one of the most
misunderstood gifts in the Church
today. Some promote clericalism
by encouraging laypersons to act as
clerics, instead of giving due honor to
the “spiritual sacrifices” proper to the
baptismal priesthood: self-sacrifice
in the family’s home, in the business’s
boardroom, on the factory’s floor, and
in the public square.
The third key gift of Baptism is
that the Holy Spirit through Baptism
marks the Christian with the “seal
of the Lord” (CCC 1274).
This seal marks the Chris-
tian as irrevocably being
destined for God in Heaven.
Of course, this mark is a
mark of the Christian’s
destiny, not of her salvation.
The Gospel does not teach that the
Christian who is once saved is always
saved, or that who is once baptized is
always saved. Salvation depends upon
perseverance “in Christ”: both living
and dying “in Christ.” The Catechism
attests that no “sin can erase this
mark, even if sin prevents Baptism
from bearing the fruits of salvation”
(CCC 1272).
The Baptism of the Lord in the
Jordan River reveals to man the
loving relationships that God the
Son shared with the Father and the
Holy Spirit from all eternity. At His
Baptism, Jesus did not receive but
revealed. He revealed who He is in
relation to the other divine Persons
of the Trinity. In this, He revealed the
inheritance that’s destined for each
baptized Christian who lives and dies
“in Christ.”