by Father Michael Panicali
At Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, the elderly Simeon, emblematic of the Old Testament, announces that he can now leave this earth, having waited his entire lifetime for the long-promised Messiah to be born. In my own humble way, my entrance into the world similarly involved someone waiting for me to be born, so that she could surrender her soul: my godmother, Mary Vandigni.
Family friends Mary and Frank Vandigni, and their sons, lived across the street from our home and were asked to be my godparents. Riddled with cancer, Mary waited until I was born so she could hold me in her arms. Being too heavy for her, she could only do so for a few moments.
She verbalized for my mother to take me from her. She had held on in her fight so that she could see and hold me, ever so briefly.
Mary had already passed away by the time I was baptized, a mere three weeks after I was born. My eldest sister Ann Marie stood in for Mary at the font. I memorialized this series of events as a fourth grader at St. Athanasius School, assigned to write and design a book about something significant in my life. “Mary, My Godmother” still sits on my shelf.
As my sister Ann Marie did for my godmother on my baptism day, Jesus stands in for us, members of a sinful humanity, in coming to his cousin John in the Jordan River. The son of the Temple priest Zechariah, John the Baptist, serves as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments. He is the last in a long line of suffering prophets to proclaim the coming of the Lord and the need for immediate repentance and conversion. Today’s feast, so wisely incorporated into the Christmas season, beautifully illustrates and seals Jesus’ mission, begun at the incarnation, to serve as the stand-in for sinful humanity.
He who does not require baptism submits to it on our behalf. He who does not sin takes his place on the cross, standing in for us, taking upon himself, his very flesh, the sins of the world, and their horrific, reverberating consequences.
Patristic Father St. Gregory of Nazianzus invites us to be bathed in light as Christ is, and to go down into the waters as Christ does, so as to rise with him. St. Gregory proposes that “Jesus comes to sanctify his baptizer; certainly he comes to bury sinful humanity in the waters.
He comes to sanctify the Jordan for our sake and in readiness for us; He who is spirit and flesh comes to begin a new creation through the Spirit and water.”
St. Gregory urges all to “be cleansed entirely and continue to be cleansed, for nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and salvation of men, for whom his every word and every revelation exist.
“God desires us to become living forces for all humankind, lights shining in the world … and to enjoy more and more the pure and dazzling light of the Trinity, as now we have received — though not in its fullness — a ray of its splendor, proceeding from the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Once wretched, by means of our passing through the waters of baptism, we arise, as the light of the world, radiating the glory of the triune God who calls us adopted children.
Father Michael Panicali is the parochial vicar for St. Helen Church in Howard Beach.