Ending Noel

Water – an essential element of all life. 90% of the human body is comprised of water. Water replenishes plant life, provides oxygenation for humans and animals to breathe and avails a natural habitat for sea life to live and thrive. Without water, the community that inhabits Earth would perish. 

For Catholic Christians, today's feast of the Baptism of the Lord ends the season of Noel with a plunge into the water of life that moves initiated Christians into the challenge of the Gospel priority of the poor and the concern for community. In other words, all about "me" becomes all about "we."

How does the Christian community, which finds its source of systemic support in parish life welcome the stranger, the doubter, the mentally and physically challenged? How does a parish community embrace the unwanted, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the imprisoned, feed the hungry and bury its dead? How does a parish identify itself as a Christian community within this Jesus, the Christ who comes as God in enfleshed, takes on our human condition by becoming one of us and enters into radical solidarity with every living person?

"We are urged to move quckly beyond the intimate scene of Jesus' birth toward the more challenging vision of his baptism. In short, we are asked to move in the direction of life itself: from concern from intimacy to concern for community.

A Christian parish become its best self when it accepts the challenge of community. The parish community, as the real expression of a local church, cannot limit its attention to the search for justice and intimacy among it own members; it must be prepared to take up the cross, standing against evil and injustice wherever they exist in the world. This may seem like a harsh message for the Christmas season, but in fact it is the church's message at all times, in all seasons. There is, ulitimately, only one mystery Christians celebrate: the paschal mystery, Jesus' dying and rising in a new human community called "church." Nathan Mitchell

May all Christians begin anew in Ordinary Time (which is anything but ordinary) with renewed strength and gratitude for their own baptism that prompts initiated Chritians not only to preach the Gospel in words but to become the Gospel in visible deeds so that humankind may not perish but thrive through the water that gives life to the world. 

Merry Christmas.  

Postscript: Hopefully some parishes today celebrated an Asperges rite and a renewal of Baptismal promises. If not, consider tucking this suggestion away in your archives for next year's celebration of the Baptism of the Lord.