Father, When Were You Pleased with Me?

A Reading for the Holy Gospel according to Mark

This is what John the Baptist proclaimed: 
“One mightier than I is coming after me.
I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.
I have baptized you with water; 
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
It happened in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee 
and was baptized in the Jordan by John.
On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open 
and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him.
And a voice came from the heavens, 
“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
 

As I went backward underwater, I opened my eyes and saw a bright light. I was Jesus, suspended beneath the water, watching the whole of my life flash before my eyes. My life was beautifully simple, and I was deeply loved. 

In a second, everything was rewound, and my life again flashed before my eyes. Only this time, I was no longer experiencing this moment as Jesus but as myself. My life was much more complicated, and I struggled to believe that I was truly loved.  

“Father, when were you pleased with me?”

As I plunged back into the water, suspended in peace, the review of my life began to slow down and focus on particular memories. The Father was there at all of them, and he was quite obnoxious and almost embarrassing as he watched with a megaphone and all kinds of little noisemakers. At  each memory, from the day of my birth in the hospital to award ceremonies, football games and good test scores, he was there making as much noise as possible screaming, “WOOOOOOO, THAT’S MY BOY!”Then, there were other moments when I was sad, hurt or had just done something that I wasn’t supposed to do, and He was also there. He had his arm around me saying, “I love you, and I am still proud to be your father.” 

When I finally came out of the water, I heard “Behold my beloved son with whom I have always been and will always be well pleased.” 

This experience in prayer happened on an eight-day silent retreat in the summer of 2019, and it is one to which I return often when I struggle to believe that God is a good father and that He is there in both the good times and the bad. I share this experience with you because I believe that this is an encounter that the Lord desires to invite all of us into. He desires to pour out an overabundance of His love on us, but He does not do so without our permission. As a true gentleman, He waits patiently for the Beloved to open up to Him and invite Him in. In turn, we must be willing to be vulnerable with the Lord and let Him know that we struggle to believe that He loves us as we are and that past experiences make it difficult for us to see Him as a good father who is pleased with us. 

In conclusion, I would like to ask you if you have ever stopped to consider the true beauty of your own baptism and all that happened at that moment? Do you know what day you were baptized? Have you ever thought about the fact that your baptism day is even more important than your birthday? Even though I was baptized as an adult, this reality didn’t hit me until recently when I realized that my baptism day is literally my birth-into-eternal-life-day. How cool is that?! Don’t get me wrong, we should definitely celebrate our “I escaped the womb day,” but I would like to suggest that moving forward, we also begin to celebrate the day on which the Lord adopted us as His Beloved Children.

This week, take some time to sit with this upcoming Sunday’s Gospel passage, placing yourself in the scene, engaging all of the senses of your imagination. What do you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell? When the Lord has captured your imagination, He has the ability to speak to you in new ways. Your experience won’t be my experience, but the Lord does desire to speak to you in and through His Word! As you’re praying with Scripture, here are some possible questions and themes with which you can engage the Lord: Father, when were you pleased with me? Do you truly love me as I am, even when I fall short time and time again? What does it mean to be your little one?

About the Author: After converting to the Catholic faith in 2012, Albert Blount was told by many different people that he would be a priest one day. Though it was something that he denied interiorly, he always responded with a gentle, “If God wills it.” Over time, he began to ask God to give him the desire for priesthood if it was truly what He wanted. For a few years, the thought of the priesthood slipped into the back of Albert’s mind, and he began to focus more on his relationship with God and learning who God was and how God saw him. During this period of reflection, there came a moment when Albert truly recognized his sonship in God the Father, in that moment, the Lord invited him to be His priest. God willing, he will be ordained to the priesthood in May of 2023.