With You I Am Well Pleased

By John Graveline, Director of Parish Life

January 11, 2026

“Therefore we have been buried with [Christ Jesus] by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

—Romans 6:4

This weekend we conclude our celebration of the Christmas Season by contemplating the meaning of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist.

If you ask most Christians to name the most spiritually meaningful event in their lives, I would guess that very few would say the day of their baptism, especially if they were baptized as a child and they have no memory of the sacrament. However, on the day of our baptism, we entered the door to all the other spiritual riches of our faith. Without baptism, we would not be able to receive any of the other sacraments. At our baptism, we became a “new creation” in Christ, adopted daughters and sons in the Son. We were given a participation in the very life of Christ. We call this gift Sanctifying Grace. The kingdom of God is within us! We can call upon the power of Christ’s divine life within us whenever we share with Christ our prayers, work, desires, joys, fears, and sufferings. This past Jubilee Year was a privileged time to deepen our prayer life (the communication that nourish es the new life in Christ) and more closely model our lives on Jesus’ mission. But now is the time to continue the mission and begin bearing the fruit of Jubilee. This is a most opportune time to reconnect with our baptismal identity. To each of us, the Father says, “You are my beloved son (daughter); with you I am well pleased.” Do we believe this? If so, what difference does the laying hold of this identity make in our lives?

“Although I have lived through much darkness, I have seen enough evidence to be unshakably convinced that no difficulty, no fear is so great that it can completely suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young . . . Do not let that hope die! Stake your lives on it! We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.”

—Pope St. John Paul II

We humbly acknowledge that we are wounded sinners and imperfect disciples of our Lord, but our baptismal dignity does not rest on our being successful or perfect.

It rests on the fact that God loves each one of us personally and has called us to communion with himself through the communion of the Church. When we live in this freedom of the children of God, all the false fronts and masks that we are tempted to wear to prove to the world (or even other members of the church) that we are worthy, loveable, successful, “with-it”, and perfect fall away, and we discover our true selves: wounded and imperfect, but still good and loveable; in fact, already loved immeasurably by a God who is Merciful Love. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, we are each created ultimately to see God face-to-face and to be seen by him; but how can God see us face-to-face until we have faces (by dropping our false facades). This is at the heart of the meaning and power of baptism.

“For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of the one Spirit.”

—1 Corinthians 12:13

Thankfully, we don’t have to go it alone on this courageous journey.

We have been baptized into a Church, a community of faith. We carry each other on the pilgrimage of this life’s joys and sorrows, hopes and fears. Through our church unity in the Body of Christ, we come closer together to God, to each other, and to our truest selves. It’s a paradox of the spiritual life that the more we seek out opportunities (usually at our own inconvenience and discomfort) to know, love, and serve others better, the more we connect to our deepest personal truth. Conversely, the more we seek our spiritual fulfilment individualistically, the more disconnected we become from our own deepest heart. May we take this opportunity to reconnect with our baptismal identity, knowing in a deep way the unconditional love of God for each of us and for all people. This is our deepest identity of our true selves: that we are beloved of God. Please pray with me that each person in our parish will open their hearts to God’s eternal love this year, so that when our earthly journey is completed, we each will hear God say to us face-to-face, “You are my beloved daughter (son): with you I am well pleased.”

John