“In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.
Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly
is acceptable to him…”
These beautiful and powerful words of inclusion were spoken by St. Peter to Cornelius, the gentile, in the Acts of the Apostles in the first lesson on this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. They are a reminder to us by the first Pope that no one is outside of the loving mercy of the Lord of Life. There is no one who possesses an inside track on God’s partiality. Coming from the lips of one raised within the tradition of the Covenant that God made with the people of Israel, now transformed by the new Covenant in Christ, it was a liberating message that Peter and the other Apostles were charged with bringing to the world.
On this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, how fitting it is to remember the wideness of God’s mercy as we sing in the beautiful hymn of that same name. There is indeed a ‘wideness’ in the loving embrace of our God that sees all women and men as his beloved children, inviting them to eternal life through the waters of baptism.
It has been said that Catholics of all the various Christian denominations has the most expansive understanding of salvation in Christ. While there are some Christians who hold to the literal words of Scripture that one has to be baptized by water in order to be saved, thus relegating the majority of the world’s population to eternal exclusion from God’s presence, we Catholics hold to a far more inclusive understanding of salvation that does not straight-jacket God to the literal words of scripture.
Catholics have traditionally believed in three kinds of ‘baptism:’ of water, desire and blood. One can be ‘born again’ through the literal waters of the sacrament of Baptism; through no fault of one’s own and desiring to live a good and virtuous life or, as the great theologian Karl Rahner called it, living the life of the ‘anonymous Christian,’ be saved; and finally, one who may not have been physically baptized in water, is martyred for believing in Christ in their heart, is baptized by their own blood – such a person is indeed saved.
We must never forget that God is bigger than the categories of human thought that so often exclude and divide. God transcends such petty categories that more often say more about us than the Lord of Creation.
On this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the giver of Baptism unto life eternal, our response remains the simple prayer: Thanks be to God!
There's a wideness in God's mercy,
like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in his justice
which is more than liberty.