A great privilege I have is celebrating Mass at Little Sisters of the Poor at their Lincoln Park location, right in our neighborhood. This community brings together people who are God’s poor and those struggling to make ends meet, as they enter the years of being elderly. It is such a joyful community of people encountering God in the everyday realities of life.
On this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we remember the moment Jesus went down into the waters of the Jordan to be baptized by John. Remarkable. The sinless One being baptized in the waters of humanities sinful, broken nature. As Jesus “went down” into those waters, He immediately “rose” from them into His Mission. The words of the Father, “You are my beloved Son,” followed him throughout His ministry and onto the Cross and into the Resurrection.
YOU are God’s beloved daughter or son. YOU are called out of those waters of your own baptism into your own unique Mission of living out the gospel through marriage or the single life. In your baptism, you are are reading these words, are united with those residents of Little Sisters, for we are all poor in one way or another. And God is a living and loving Presence within the depths of our hearts, who is our companion in our suffering, loneliness, illnesses and yearnings.
Our lives…. Your life is a constant and daily dying and rising, dying and rising, dying and rising.., the awesome Paschal Mystery, enveloping us like that white garment that clothed us after our baptism. We are enveloped in love….