Today is Memorial Day celebration here in America. Today, we remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our national freedom. Their heroism, bravery, and sacrifice made our daily pleasures and freedoms possible. We are called to pause and recognize the great price that has been paid and to show our national pride and gratefulness for those who have paid so very much. May their souls rest in the Lord, Amen.
Jesus reminded us that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. God the Father accepted the holocaust of his Son in raising him from the dead, so may He accept the offering we make today for ourselves and for our sisters and brothers and lead us all to eternal life.
In the first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles 19: 1-8, we read Paul insisted that those Christians in Ephesus who were baptized under John’s baptism should still have had to receive baptism with the Holy Spirit. In a similar way, we’re told, a man named Apollos, who had actually been preaching Jesus, “knew only the baptism of John,” with the implication that such baptism was insufficient (Acts 18:24–25).
The baptism administered by John was not the Christian baptism that the Church administered. This difference was most clearly demonstrated by Paul’s actions when he encountered some men in the city of Ephesus who had received John’s baptism, as noted above. John’s baptism, Paul explained, was simply a “baptism of repentance, telling people to believe in the One who was to come after Him, that is, Jesus” (Acts 18:4). But Christian baptism is much more. Through it, we are buried with Christ in His death and raised with Him to new life (Romans 6:1–5). Christian baptism cleanses us of both original sin, and actual sin committed up to that point (Acts 2:3, 38–39; 22:16). It causes us to be “born again” into the family of God (John 3:3–5; Galatians 3:27). It incorporates us into Christ as members of His body, initiating us into life in Christ and His Church (1 Corinthians 12:13). It restores to us the supernatural life of God and infuses in us the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
All this comes about through the action of the Holy Spirit—a divine activity that was absent in John’s baptism. St. John himself declared: “I have baptized you with water, but He [Jesus] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:8).
Another thing to recall from the first reading is that the men Paul encountered in Ephesus received John’s baptism but had never even heard that there was a Holy Spirit. It was only after they had received Christian baptism “the Holy Spirit came on them” (Acts 19:2)
Christian baptism is, of course, greater than John’s baptism, even as Jesus himself is far greater than John (Matt. 3:14, John 3:30).
Christian baptism has its origin from Jesus’ own baptism. Jesus had no need to be cleansed by the waters of baptism, for he had no sins to be washed away. Rather, he sanctified the waters by his descent into them. Baptism symbolizes dying and rising. Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind’s guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan.
John Chrysostom writes: “Going down into the water and emerging again are the image of the descent into hell and the Resurrection” (19).
The baptism of the Lord also reminds us, of course, of our own baptism. The Church teaches that baptism not only lets us participate in Jesus’ victory over sin and death, but calls us to our own personal holiness and apostolate (sharing our faith). When you boil it all down, this is the essence of how we fulfill our baptismal mandate to become saints.
Have a wonderful Memorial Day Celebration
