Today’s Gospel tells the story of the baptism of Jesus. Bishop Robert Barron said the first thing we must keep in mind about the baptism of Jesus was that it was embarrassing. Here is the one that the first Christians maintained was the Son of God, the sinless lamb who takes away the sins of the world, the Word made flesh. So why the heck is he seeking a baptism of repentance? As is usually the case with the Bible, there is an irony in the fire. Before ever a word passes Jesus’ lips, he is teaching, in fact, communicating the heart of the faith by this stunning reversal. In this gesture, God lays aside his glory and humbly joins us in our sinfulness, standing with us and assuming our burden. Dr. Mary Healy writes that John’s prophecy that Jesus would “baptize you with the Holy Spirit” is fulfilled in the life of every new Christian through the sacraments of baptism and confirmation. Just as the gestation of our first birth took place in water, so the water of Baptism truly signifies that our birth into the divine life is given to us in the Holy Spirit. Most Christians receive this unspeakable gift at a very young age; thus, to experience its full effects, we need to appropriate the gift of the Spirit personally through faith, ongoing conversion, and growth in the knowledge of God. The phrase “baptism in the Spirit” has also become familiar to millions of English-speaking Christians through the charismatic renewal, which adapted the biblical term to express the life-changing encounter with Christ and the outpouring of the power of the Holy Spirit that many experience. “Baptism in the Spirit,” in this sense, is not a sacrament but a coming alive of the graces received in sacramental baptism. Although the grace of Pentecost is manifested in different ways in every age, it is fundamentally the same grace of which John spoke and which Jesus poured out on the Church after his passion and resurrection.