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Bishop's Homily for the Baptism of the Lord

January 12, 2025

Homily of Most Reverend Larry Silva, Bishop of Honolulu
[St. Stephen Diocesan Center (Institution of Acolytes for Deacon Candidates); Our Lady of the Mount Church, Kalihi (Santo Niño Celebration)]

It would be fascinating to hear some of you married couples tell us about the day you “popped the question” -- the day the question was asked, “Will you marry me?” and the affirmative reply was given.  I imagine the occasion was carefully planned, surrounded perhaps by candlelight, music, and great romance.  At that moment, your faults and failings dissolved into irrelevance, and all you could think of was the love you wanted to share for the rest of your lives.

Today, in a sense, we celebrate the engagement of God to the human race, a marriage that would have its ups and downs, but would be consummated in the great act of God’s self-giving.  He had previously sent messengers and many messages to tell us how much he loved us.  Some were in the most romantic poetry and gestures imaginable; while some were in harsh words and gestures intended to make us wake up to the reality of God’s love.  In the fullness of time, God sent his only Son to become one of us, so that Jesus could become the loving Bridegroom who would take to himself his most beloved Bride, the human race he had created.  This is a love story, surrounded by the poetry of the prophets, the music of angels, starry eyes and starry skies, and gestures so romantic that we never tire of hearing the story of the details of the birth of Jesus and how God made that engagement so dramatically beautiful.

Today we reflect on the fact that the sinless One, Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Mary, the Son of David, immersed himself in a baptism of repentance, not because he needed it, but because we do.  He plunged into the waters to wash away our sins by identifying with our sinful nature without himself sinning.  This gesture was meant to be the Bridegroom’s engagement with his beloved Bride, and as we see, God made it a memorable occasion, with the Father himself giving consent by his voice from heaven, and the Holy Spirit anointing the entire occasion as he hovered over the waters.  This is the occasion when Jesus, the Bridegroom, changed mere water into the finest wine by changing sinful humanity into his spotless Bride.

This engagement period lasted three years, as Jesus set out on his public ministry, calling his beloved to follow him.  It was almost ended when we rejected him so cruelly by letting sin and pride drown out our reason, and put him to a cruel and violent death, perhaps because, deep down we were afraid to be so loved by God.  But God would not take “No” for an answer, and Jesus willingly suffered this cruelty.  Then he rose from the dead, so that his beloved Bride could also live forever with him.  The world was overwhelmed with such an undeserved and unmerited gesture of pure love for us.  And the love story deepens, when the Bridegroom enters us in the most intimate and holy communion of the Eucharist, so that we can partake fully in his divinity who humbled himself and to immerse himself in our humanity.

Jesus continues throughout the ages to show us romantic gestures of his divine love.  He gives us his eternal Word to nourish and sustain us, and he calls ministers to proclaim his Word and to help us all savor the sweet new wine of his love.  He provides a feast for us that seems so simple, but that is the most profound engagement of Bride and Bridegroom we can imagine, and he calls ministers to tie this knot again and again by calling down the Holy Spirit to change the ordinary into the most extraordinary.

[For the Mass for the Institution of Acolytes:
You men who are to instituted today as acolytes are part of the music of this love story of Jesus and his beloved Body, the Church.  Your ministry is not just moving needed objects like books and cruets to the proper place at the proper time, but to do so with great love, a love nurtured by prayer and by daily contemplation on this great mystery of God’s love.]

[For the Santo Niño Mass:
Jesus continues to make himself small for us, to humble himself as a little child, as the Santo Niño, so that he can continue to speak to our hearts of his profound love, and so that we can dance and sing with him forever.]

We cannot count the ways that God shows us his love, but we immerse ourselves in this wildly romantic love by letting these stories of God’s love for us sink deeply in our hearts to wash us of our sins and to strengthen us for the glorious mission of proclaiming this love to all and inviting them to come to the Wedding Banquet, not simply as guests, but as the Bride chosen by the Bridegroom, whose love is unfathomable!