One of the most well-known Psalms is Psalm 23, beloved for its first words: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” These words and the imagery of the rest of the Psalm remind all of us that Jesus is watching out for us in every part of our lives. He is there in the good times and in the bad times, and he leads us to himself into eternal life. That is one of the reasons this Psalm is so often used at funerals – it gives us a chance to remember how Jesus shepherded us throughout our lives and continues to do so into death.
One of the primary ways that our Good Shepherd, Jesus, leads and guides us is by bringing us to the sacraments. A shepherd leads his sheep to food, water, and shelter, and nourishes and heals his sheep when they need medicine of any sort. Jesus works similarly with us. He brings us to life-giving water in Baptism, feeds us with his body, the Eucharist, brings us into the shelter of the life of the Church, and offers us healing through Penance and Anointing.
The sacraments can be seen in the different imagery used throughout the Psalm, but because today is the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I will focus on the first image used – water. In verses two and three of the Psalm, we pray, “He leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.” One may interpret this in many ways regarding the various comforts that God gives to his faithful people in this life – the consolations in the soul during prayer, good people he places in our lives to be refreshing streams, good books, good scenes in nature, actual cool springs of water when we find ourselves thirsty, etc. – God refreshes us because of his goodness and even brings us a solace of his presence while we are suffering, or, at the very least, a recognition that we are not alone whether we feel it or not.
One way to interpret these verses that we find in the tradition and which is arguably the best interpretation in terms of its messianic fulfillment, is that the Good Shepherd leads us beside the restoring waters of Baptism. This interpretation is the one used by St. Augustine in his very short commentary on this Psalm. St. Augustine notes, “He has nurtured me beside regenerating water: this means that he nurtured me beside the water of baptism, where those who have lost their soundness and strength are made new” (Expositions of the Psalms, 22.1-2, translated by Maria Boulding). In the sacrament of baptism, our souls are restored to new life and filled with the life of God!
Really, as St. Augustine explains elsewhere, “God could have granted no greater gift to human beings than to cause his Word, through whom he created all things, to be their head, and to fit them to him as his members” (ibid. 85.1). It is the grace of Baptism that causes us to be joined into that body, which is the greatest gift God could give us. To be joined to the body of Christ is to share in his divine life – his relationships with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Before baptism, a human being is a child of God in the sense of being created by him and loved as such. After Baptism, however, a human being is a child of God as one adopted into the Son, the second person of the Trinity. This is a far greater sonship or daughter-ship than before. The Father looks on us and loves us as he does Jesus. That is a great gift.
We call this grace “filiation” – from the Latin, filius, meaning “son.” We also call this gift, “divinization.” In the sense that we are drawn into the life of the Trinity, we share the divine life of God. We don’t become God himself, but he gives us a share in his divinity by adoption (see 2 Peter 1:4). Today, we celebrate the institution of this great sacrament of new life. We thank Jesus for the gift of this adoption and our ability to call out “Our Father!” Praise be Jesus Christ. Amen!