Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7
Acts 10:34-38
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
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With Jesus, expect the
unexpected.
As we hear in today’s Gospel
reading, “The people were filled with expectation.”
Was John the Christ? If not, who
was the Christ and when would he come? Would the Christ be the expected
military leader of Israel who would break the bonds of Roman oppression?
As we heard last week at
Epiphany, even Herod was worried about this potential challenger and all Jerusalem
with him.
With Jesus, expect the
unexpected.
This is the message this week for
us all.
With His baptism, Jesus is here
to bring forth justice to the nations. Jesus is here to lead us all in the
peace. Jesus is our true savior. No one
else can do this. Only Jesus.
The first reading from the
Prophet Isaiah gives us a clue as to how he will lead,
“Like a
shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom and leading the ewes with care."
This is the one who will patiently
govern with love and mercy. Not with divine force. Not with shouting. Not with
judgment. But with divine love and mercy.
With Jesus, expect the
unexpected.
Today, we’ve gone from the birth
of baby Jesus to an adult Jesus being baptized in the River Jordan. We return
to the culmination of the scene experienced throughout Advent of John the
Baptist preparing people for the coming of God.
There’s a reason we wear the
color purple during Advent. Purple is the color of penance and preparation.
Advent is a time of penance as we prepare for the birth of our savior and make
our hearts ready for Christ’s coming.
John asked us during Advent to
cleanse our hearts, change evil ways so that we might be ready for the birth of
Jesus.
Sure. Advent is a season of
expectant hope. But it’s also a time to ready the way of the Lord.
John is the bridge to the
promises made by God to His people and how Jesus fulfills them then and now. But
John is only the herald, pointing to one greater than himself.
Today, John also points to
another great theme of Luke’s Gospel: the workings of the Holy Spirit. As we hear John declare today, “(Jesus) will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” More on that in a moment.
This weekend marks the official
liturgical end of the Christmas season.
For many in the secular world,
the Christmas season ends around the New Year. That’s the time many take down
their Christmas tree, pack away the Christmas ornaments and decorations for
another year.
Our family always waits until
this weekend to go through this annual ritual. We celebrate the whole Christmas
season. I’m sure there are many here who do the same.
I’ve had neighbors ask why we
keep our Christmas lights up and on until mid-January. It’s a great moment of
evangelization to share that our faith tradition encourages us to celebrate the
whole of the Christmas season.
Our Catholic Church teaches us of
the sacred nature of this time of year. The Christmas season celebrates God
becoming flesh and dwelling among us in this world.
“Every Eucharist is like
Christmas where the bread and wine are transformed into His flesh, His Body and
Blood, and in a sense, He is born anew on the altar.”
Today, we see Jesus all grown up
and baptized in the River Jordan. We see heaven open up and the Holy Spirit
descend upon him like a dove. We hear the voice of God declare, “You
are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Notice here how Jesus is at
prayer. Luke more than any other Gospel shows Jesus in prayer at important
times in his ministry. This gives us all a good model to be in prayer at
critical times in our lives.
Today, we’re also are reminded of
the day of our own baptism.
Likely most of us don’t remember
this event. Infant baptism is the
standard practice in our Catholic faith.
That’s why it’s so special to
witness baptisms at Mass and, as a community, welcome a new member to the
Christian faith. It gives us a glimpse
of the joy our own parents and godparents experienced in this special moment.
Bishop Robert Barron says, “To be
baptized a Christian is to be grafted onto Christ and hence be drawn into the
very dynamic of the inner life of God.”
We become a member of His
mystical body, sharing in His own relationship with the Father. We are called
through our baptism to be instruments of God’s grace in the world and call
others to Jesus by our words and our actions.
Barron says, “Jesus is the Son of
God by nature. We become, by baptism, sons and daughters of God through
adoption. Baptism draws us into this relationship between the Father and the
Son through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the relationship between the
Father and the Son. Baptism in a word
is all about grace. It’s about the
breakthrough of the divine life. It’s about our incorporation through the power
of God’s love into God’s own life.”
Barron
also says, “All of us are born into a deeply dysfunctional world. A world
conditioned by millennia and eons of selfishness, cruelty, injustice,
stupidity, and fear. What this has done is it’s created a poisonous atmosphere
which conditions all of our thoughts and moves and actions.”
We
don’t choose this. We are born into it. This is original sin.
Our
baptism reverses this, draws us into the life of the Holy Trinity and God’s
mission of love to the world.
This
doesn’t mean we don’t still need the Eucharist and the Sacrament of
Reconciliation to keep us strongly connected to Christ. We all do.
The great 4th Century
Theologian Gregory of Nazianzus said this about baptism: “Baptism
is God's most beautiful and magnificent gift.
. . . It is called gift because it is conferred on
those who bring nothing of their own; (it is called) grace since
it is given even to the guilty.”
As
Jesus reminds us, “It is not you who have chosen me, but I who have chosen
you.”
With Jesus, expect the
unexpected.
As we pray on this most holy day,
at the beginning of this New Year, let us meditate on the fact that all of us
Christians should hear that same voice from God. That He is well pleased with
us, that we are His beloved.
Bishop Barron calls this “the
deepest truth of baptism.”
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