Reflection on Christian Baptism - The Feast of Baptism of the Lord
Incarnation as Ground of Baptism
The wonderful ancient text of the Antiphon for the Vespers of the feast of Divine Maternity exclaimed "the admirable exchange." God in taking our humanity has so deigned to share His divinity to us. The reality of our Lord's assumption of our human nature made possible the reality of our access to the divinity (see the article: The Marian Council of Chalcedon). As Fr. Peter Damien Fehlner, the author of the article we refer to indicated, that the denial of Christ's assumption of true human nature leads to all denial of the role of human elements in justification such as free will, the sacraments, the mediation of the Church, so the Sacrament of Baptism finds its primordial root in the mystery of Incarnation.
There are immediate implications to this link between Incarnation and Christian Baptism:
1. Supernatural character of man's destiny. This means that access to the Father needs more than just a purely human effort to achieve it. If man's destiny entails his ultimate happiness defined as eternal and perfect, there is a need for the action of the divine to reach out to man. This is what took place in the Incarnation. In this light, any human attempt to perfection that eliminate the divine action will certainly fail. It is in this category that naturalism, secularism and even pantheism belong. This is remotely implied in the teaching of the Council of Ephesus in its definition of the divinity of Christ and Mary's Divine Maternity (see article: Divine Maternity in the Council of Ephesus)
2. Personalist dimension of Baptism. Pope Benedict XVI indicated that...
"In Baptism, the Heavenly Father also repeats these words for each one of these infants. He says: "You are my child". Baptism is adoption and admission into God's family, into communion with the Most Holy Trinity, into communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. For this very reason, Baptism should be administered in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity. These words are not merely a formula; they are reality. They mark the moment when your children are reborn as children of God. From being the children of human parents, they also become the children of God in the Son of the living God. (Homily, the Feast of Baptism, January 7, 2007)
Christian Baptism effects that supernatural "grafting" into the fellowship of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. If restoration of the scarred image of God in man is the purpose of the Incarnation, that same incarnation-redemption indicates the restoration of man's capacity to interpersonal communion with the divine Persons. We can understand this when one sees that God's image in man is not just his faculties, but it is the image that is interpersonal, that is man, is made to communion, for his image is made in the likeness of the Trinitarian God (see John Paul II's Theology of the Body).
Hence, baptism elevates man's capacity for inter-personal communion, primarily with God and secondarily with his fellowmen. This is an important theological element that is totally ignored in the dynamics of social interaction and in the field of sociology. The present problem of peace and unity in the national and international community, in families and various institutions will never be completely resolved until there is a supernatural restoration of every human person. Only in this regard that he can truly be human and social.
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