Dear Parish Family,

Baptism of Our Lord   January 12, 2020
Isa 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts 10:34-38; Mt 3:13-17
“He shall bring forth justice to the nations.”

When we watch Jesus being baptized by John, we are given new insight into his person and his earthly mission. We also get a prefigurement of our own baptism and our role in salvation as a disciple of Christ that began at the river Jordan.

The Jewish people who asked John to baptize them were doing something very unusual. Baptism was normally a ritual for Gentiles who wished to be received into the Jewish faith. Jews did not see it as a necessity for themselves. It was a penitential rite for people who had been shut out by God and wished to be accepted by him. The Jews could not think of themselves that way since they were the chosen people. So the baptism going on at the river was a sign that they recognized their need for God in a new way. And this was the moment Jesus had been waiting for. By his baptism he shows his solidarity with the people who were renouncing sin and searching for God, and he would set out on his mission to save them.

This was how his public life began. The Spirit of God descended upon him, and a voice from heaven declared, “This is my beloved Son.” It recalls the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased.”

And how was Jesus going to save them? Peter says, “He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil.”  Thus he fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “I, the Lord, have called you for the victory of Justice … to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”

What Jesus received from John at the river Jordan was not the sacrament of Christian Initiation, but it does prefigure our own baptism. When you and I were baptized, not only were we adopted into the very life of God, as a new child of God, but in our own way we too were called to go about doing good as a disciple of Christ. To stand up for Justice, to open the eyes of the blind, and to free people from all kinds of prisons in their lives. When we try to live up to our mission, the Lord says of us, “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased,”

Ask yourself: “How am I called to open the eyes of the blind and work for justice?”

Deacon Rob Pang