The Renewal of Our Baptism of the Lord
A New Beginning 2026
Deacon Patrick Constantino | Photos courtesy Patrick Constantino
Every New Year we need something to remind us we need to look at things differently. Our Baptism is a good place to start. A time to make adjustments, a time to reset out lives and a time to make a difference in our Life and Strengthen our Faith in Jesus Christ!
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew (3:13-17)
Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. John tried to prevent him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?”
Jesus said to him in reply, “Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed him.
After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.
“He went about doing good … for God was with him.”
One of the blessings of being Catholic, one of the perks, if you will, is we have so many opportunities to get stuff. This stuff comes in all shapes and sizes. We get crosses and crucifixes and prayer cards. We get thousands of Saints to imitate and from which we can ask for prayers. We get palms and statues and scapulars and ashes on a Wednesday whose date changes from year to year. We get candles to remind us of Jesus and incense to symbolize our prayers and countless religious schools to choose from some of the best anywhere. We get all sorts of devotions and holy medals and manger scenes. We get retreats and parish picnics and World Youth Days and Eucharistic processions. And, of course, we get so many fish fries to choose from during Lent.
Yes, being Catholic means having the opportunity to get a lot of different stuff, having a lot of experiences not everyone gets to have. And, of course, there’s the one I left out on purpose, the one that has the greatest meaning for us far above any of those others. I’m talking about the sacraments.
Nowhere do we get more. We call this great gift—grace—God’s very life poured out for us and into us. And while there are no limits on God’s grace, we believe there are special moments in our lives of faith and the life of the Church, special experiences in which our God comes to us in unique and powerful ways. In sacred food. In promises made between spouses. In oils that heal. In oils that consecrate. In words of reconciliation. All powerful in their own way.
All God moments. All times we get something more valuable than we can imagine. And we must not forget the one that makes all the others possible—baptism and its counterpart, the re-commitment of Confirmation. Today we gather on the Baptism of the Lord—a celebration in which we recall and reflect on that day long ago when Jesus sought out John in the desert and submitted to the ritual washing he provided. But this one was different, for with it came an affirmation and declaration from almighty God.
I’ll leave it to each of you to wonder about the details of that day. But we do sort of know what came forth from that day, the consequences of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan.
Luke in Acts of the Apostles put it simply. “He went about doing good … For God was with him.” Would people say that about us? We sometimes forget all the stuff our faith provides, all the stuff our Church provides are not ends in themselves. They are not things meant for our benefit and our benefit alone, not things we are meant to seek out and cling to as if they are a precious piece of gold.
Rather, all these things, and in particular all the God moments, Sacramental and otherwise, we experience as Catholics are meant to be transformative—things that change us—so we can continue to live our lives more configured to that of our Lord.
And that means not seeing our faith as simply containing moments of getting but instead seeing those moments as starting points, launching pads for opportunities to pass those gifts forward, opportunities to fill our days with giving moments—days in which we simply look for ways to go about doing good—for God is with us. And so, baptism isn’t some kind of spiritual life insurance, some kind of hedging in case this God thing is true.
It’s actually a holy bonding, a uniting, a communing with our God—a tethering of ourselves to the Lord Jesus in an intimate way. And in doing so, we are stepping through a doorway into a new way of seeing, thinking and acting—that is, we are embracing and accepting and being willing to buy what Jesus is selling—doing what He did and going where He went and where He continues to lead.
In other words, baptism isn’t so much about what we are able to get. It’s about what we are willing to give. The problem for many of us, myself included, is we understand what this means. You see, if we are truly united to Jesus it means we are also united in His suffering and death. There is no new life without that. This dying is the doing good that was at the heart of Jesus’ entire life shown most perfectly in his death on the cross—and is the same dying we are called to—an emptying of ourselves on behalf of others, a dying that allows us to rise with Jesus and become something new, something beautiful, something and someone that we were meant to be from the very beginning.
Is that who we are? Is that who we want to be? My friends, let’s leave this place today reflecting on what exactly our baptism means for each of us. For most of us it was a long time ago. And for most of us the promise was made by others on our behalf—that moment when our parents essentially said to Jesus, “He or she is yours.”
Hopefully each of us is ready to recommit ourselves to living the life God wants for us and from us—committed to not living a life that only benefits ourselves nor one that takes the easiest path.
And if we are ready to do that, if we are still on board, still committed to being a faithful follower, let’s say a simple prayer as we go to bed tonight, one that gets at the true heart of baptism. I’m still yours, Lord!
Jesus I trust in You! Amen!
Deacon Patrick Constantino retired from active Ministry on July 1, 2022. He is still a Deacon in good standing with full faculties to perform all sacraments in the Diocesan of Honolulu Hawai‘i. Constantino has been ordained for thirty-seven years. He is the first Filipino Deacon in the Diocesan of Honolulu. Prior to his ordination, Constantino was in government—first appointed in 1966 as Assistant Sergeant of Arms by the Speaker of the House Elmer F. Cravalho. When Cravalho became Maui’s first Mayor, Constantino became his Executive Assistant—the first of Filipino ancestry. Later, Constantino became the first County Treasurer of Filipino ancestry and the first County Grants Administrator and Risk Manager of Filipino ancestry. Constantino is married to his lovely wife Corazon for sixty-four years. They are blessed with four children, eleven grandchildren, and fifteen great grandchildren.