Jesus' Baptism Means We are Beloved and We Have a Mission

Today is Jesus’ Baptism and a day that reminds us that like Him, we too are God’s beloved and have a unique mission because we are baptized. 

Like Jesus’ Baptism, our own Baptism launches us into a mission which could include a variety of things that were part of Jesus’ mission: justice, peace, teaching, healing, liberation, being a servant of God, or preaching the good news. As followers of Jesus, we are called to those same things!

Around Jesus’ Baptism, amazingly, I’m often given a new mission every couple years. Coincidence? In past years, it was a mission of healing which launched me down a different professional path from where I was headed, and then a Franciscan mission which launched me down a path of becoming a Secular Franciscan. Other years, a new volunteer endeavor or smaller mission surfaced. Each mission has added a different and important dimension to my vocation and life. 

The same was true this year. The mission I was given changed and twice I heard boldly in Scripture while praying: “Save the children of the poor.” So for me, it’s a focused mission of justice. Maybe fostering. Maybe adopting. Maybe funding a few more children’s livelihoods in a third world nation. What that will require of me, I’m still not exactly sure. But I have my mission and marching orders from the Lord and now, I must start to respond. I must discern if the mission involves sacrifice of other missions for a time. 

How do we come to our mission? How do we know what it is? So many of us are walking through this earth mission-less (or at least appearing mission-less). Our mission is to get to our next day off or some retirement or financial goal. It’s evident in how much effort we put into the day to day roles we have and whether we’re really acting like servants who are doing God’s work.

I don’t think that’s what God had in mind for our mission when we were baptized. These aren’t missions, rather these are fleeting contentments that don’t satisfy and certainly don’t give us a bigger purpose. Instead, God had things like justice, peace, teaching, healing, liberation, being a servant of God, or preaching the good news in mind – something unique to our gifts, passions, and state of life. Something that builds up the Kingdom of God. To find it, we have to do a bit of soul searching and a lot of prayer and asking God what our mission is.

Additionally, it often takes us many years to understand that mission because many of us are baptized as babies and don’t internalize the meaning of that sacrament as children. The meaning of it comes many years down the line.

Later in our young adulthood or adulthood, we need to hear those same words that Jesus did, affirming our belovedness. If we never know God’s love for us, we will often not know what He has in mind for us. For example, I did not have a sense of my mission until I knew that God deeply loved and cared for me and had a purpose for me. That only happened when I was about 32 years old!

We have to be grounded in knowing our belovedness before we know our mission.

So on this Feast of Jesus’ Baptism, perhaps it’s a good time to reflect on your belovedness by God as a baptized son or daughter of God, and what your mission is at this time and place in your life. Hopefully God will grace you with an understanding of your mission and purpose, like He has done so many times for me.