Monday, January 09,
2017
The Feast of the
Baptism of the Lord
And with this feast the
liturgical season of Christmas comes to an end. Once again we note that the
Church’s sense of time is not in synch with the movement of secular time. The
secular Christmas season, or perhaps we should say, holiday season began
shortly after Halloween and ended with the post-Christmas sales sometime during
the Christmas Octave. The liturgical season of Christmas began on Christmas Eve
and ends today. It is a shame that so many of our churches decorate for
Christmas long before the season actually begins rather than observing the
silent and beautiful austerity of Advent with its wreath and purple hues,
putting up the trees and the green-red wreaths on the 24th as well.
One of the things I like about being in the monastery is that we do not see the
signs of Christmas until the afternoon of the 24th when, in a gentle
flurry of activity, things are made ready for the opening of the Christmas
celebration which begins with the first Vespers of Christmas around 5:30 pm on
Christmas Eve.
And now on this last day of the
season we hear the story of the Lord’s Baptism in the Jordan by St. John the
Baptist. Last week I wrote about the notion of Trinity as relationship, and
this feast clearly demonstrates that notion in the most explicit and graphic
passage in all the gospels. I’ll quote the passage here for you in case you don’t
have a Bible or a Missal handy:
After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens
were opened for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and
coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved
Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:15-17)
And there we have it. The
Father, the Son and the Spirit perceived by sight and by hearing. For me, this
amounts to a picture of the Trinity in action and in relationship, and who is
the witness? Well, John the Baptist and we who hear and read these words
and let our imaginations behold the picture they represent. Notice, if you
will, that love and approval and acceptance are part of the message that is
heard.
In his powerful book, The Divine Dance, Fr. Richard Rohr uses
an icon to demonstrate the important reality that we, too, are a part of the
intermingling of relationships within the Trinity, and I refer you to that book
if you feel you are ready to explore that theme more fully.
Here, however, in this scene
from Matthew’s Gospel, I also see the reality of the fact that we are a part of
the flowing of relationships within the Trinity. John the Baptist stands as a
witness to the mystical vision, and I would like to suggest that John the
Baptist is standing in our place and that we, too, are included within
the dynamic life of the Trinity.
I thumbed through a hymnal, the
most recent edition of Worship
publishes by GIA Publications, Inc. (giamusic.com), and was delighted to see
that two of the hymns in the Trinity section of that hymnal also speak of the dance
of the Trinity—and so we can see that Fr. Rohr is using an image that has its
precedents. In closing today, I am going to give you the first verses of the
two hymns I found for your further reflection and meditation.
“The play of the Godhead, the Trinity’s dance, embraces the earth in a
sacred romance, with God the Creator and Christ the true son, entwined with the
Spirit, a web daily spun in spangles of mystery, the great Three in One.” Mary
Louise Bringle
Come, join the dance of the Trinity, before all worlds begun, the
interweaving of the Three, the Father, Spirit and Son. The universe of space
and time did not arise by chance, but as the Three, in love and hope, made room
within their dance. Richard Leach
God bless you!
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