Called to Be Holy
“To you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.”
1 Corinthians 1:2
As we enter into Ordinary Time we recall the Baptism of the Lord in whom we are baptized. The Lord was baptized so that He might sanctify the waters, preparing it for our baptism, our exodus from slavery to freedom, leaving behind our identity as unredeemed sinners and rising up as sons and daughters of the Father. The moment we emerge from those living waters, the Father affirms us as His beloved, tells us He is pleased with us, and sets us apart from the others, sanctifying us, making us holy so that we might be one with Him and sanctify the world by our witness.
To be made holy means to be set apart, and we who are baptized are set apart by and for God. Before our baptism we belonged to the world, to death, to the grip of the enemy. After our baptism, God the Father claims us as His own, placing us behind His standard, transforming our natural end to a supernatural one — eternal life and sharing in the very life of God. Because Jesus went down into the water we dare to ask for such a gift. To this John the Baptist bore witness. John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus, the one who went before the Him to “prepare His way,” the one whose entire life pointed to the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” for he said that he baptized people with water so “that he might be made known to Israel,” He who is the Son of God.
As baptized Christians, we are called to put on Christ, but also to bear witness as John the Baptist had done so. We are called to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God and to make known to all peoples the Good News that He has come to take away the sins of the world, not by commanding an army, but by taking on our sins and placing them on the Cross, the cross that was meant for us, for “He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor 5:21). Jesus undoes the disobedience of Adam with His obedience, fulfilling all righteousness, drawing all people to Himself so that we too might be in relationship with the Father.
So, brothers and sisters, we are called to be holy, to be set apart, to know whose we are, because we are no longer creatures whose end is death, but rather sons and daughters made for heaven, for relationship with God. So, by our baptism, the Father has already restored to us the identity lost in Adam — His beloved, but we must choose to reclaim this identity and live it out. The Lord calls us today. How will we respond?
