Dear folks,
Now we come to the Baptism of the Lord, the end of the Christmas season.
Isaiah speaks of a servant who is working quietly, “to open the eyes of the blind and bring out prisoners from confinement…”. We remember that our sins blind us and imprison us, and the grace of God enables us to see the truth and be free. Our Enemy has convinced a lot of people that to be Christian is to live a cramped, diminished life in the hopes of a reward from God. Our job is to show that living according to the Gospel is a freer, more abundant way to live.
In our Gospel John the Baptist knows something is out of place with Jesus requesting Baptism. We, of course, know that Jesus had no sin and so did not need a baptism of repentance for Himself. However, this is the beginning of His taking on the mantle of sinner that we might be freed from our sins. When Jesus says, “Allow it now, for thus is it fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” He is talking about putting everything into right relationship.
Our relationship with God, with each other, and with the earth itself were thrown into chaos by sin (See Genesis 3), and this diminished the flourishing of life. Bringing order out of chaos so that life could flourish is going to take sacrifice, and we shall see it again and again in the Gospel of Matthew.
We the baptized are united with Jesus in His mission. We will often face situations that are unfair. We shall have to help clean up messes that we didn’t make, fix things we didn’t break, and be blamed for things that are not our fault. As we go through the Gospel this year, we see how Jesus faced that. He always stood for what was true and right and often suffered unjustly for it. He never let it stop Him.
After His baptism, He would go to the desert to face temptation and then started proclaiming the Kingdom of heaven. As the Christmas season ends, we get to ordinary time, the time in which most of the work gets done.
There was an article in Wordonfire.org called “Catholic Call to be the Soul of the World” by Tim Glemkowski. He quotes the 2nd century “Letter to Diognetus”: To sum up all in
one word—what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, yet is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, yet are not of the world.” This is similar to Jesus’ call to be salt of the earth and light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16).
We, the baptized Christians, are called to seek union with Jesus to be transformed so that we can transform the world. It’s a tall order but let us not underestimate the power of the Gospel. We may not see all the results but let us trust that God is at work. May we have a fruitful year.
Blessings,
Fr. Jim