Opening reflection (from Magnificat magazine, www.magnificat.com): Jesus joins the people going out to John the Baptist in the gesture of repentance, not because there is sin in Him, but in order to model for us the only authentic way to approach the Father. He goes to the Baptist as a beggar because the Mystery is mercy. Through the mystery of the Baptism of the Lord, whenever we regard our sins we see something more: Jesus Christ who comes to be present to us, even identifying with us sinners. Whenever we look at our sins, we see Someone looking at us with love. We can face our sins because of the gaze of that face. Thanks to the Baptism of the Lord, never again must we confront the horror of our sins alone.
(This weekend's Scripture readings are available in the New American Bible translation – the one used in U.S. Catholic parishes – at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website: http://www.usccb.org/nab/010911.shtml)
First Reading: Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7 (Revised Standard Version)
A reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him,
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not fail or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his law.
(God says:) "I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.”
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Meditation: We recall this Sunday the day when the cousin of a dynamic, if eccentric, desert preacher made His first public appearance among the people God had sent Him to save. It was a day that God permitted Isaiah to glimpse from the distance of several centuries in his future. The Messiah that God had long promised would arrive. But He would not show up as a King, King though He was. He came as a humble servant of the God who sent His only Son to reconcile humanity with its Creator.
What kind of Savior would God's Servant be? Perhaps politically-minded Jews would have done well, in looking upon Jesus, to recall Isaiah's declaration that “He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street.” That is how political revolutionaries speak – and though Jesus spoke often, forcefully and eloquently, He most definitively never called for a Jewish war for earthly independence, power and glory.
How then could He “bring forth justice to the nations”? With the gentleness that nurtures the spiritually poor so beaten down by sin that his or her light of faith has all but gone out. With the wisdom that renews in the spiritually blind the vision they need to set aside the selfishness that is sin, to love and serve God and each other as fully and intensely as Christ loves and serves.
The Jewish people had been chosen to model this kind of love and service, but being human, had fallen short. Jesus came to fulfill God's covenants with Israel and make a new, eternal covenant. The Gentiles lacked even the light reflected in Israel through the Law and the prophets. Jesus Himself would be their light, enveloping them in the same New Covenant, sealed with His body and blood.
How would Jesus fulfill Isaiah's words during His public ministry? We shall recall these things over the long weeks between now and Easter.
Second Reading: Acts 10:34-38
A reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
And Peter opened his mouth and said: "Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), the word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Meditation: St. Peter, too, points toward the Jordan as he personally delivers the Gospel to the Roman centurion Cornelius and his family. Our first pope had just received the powerful vision of the ritually unclean animals that God commanded him to eat, saying that Peter was not to shun those whom God had declared to be clean. Then Cornelius' messengers came to him, begging him to come and tell them about Jesus. And once Peter arrived, Cornelius revealed that he, too, had had a vision telling him to find Peter!
No longer could Jewish Christians hold to the narrow vision that the term “Chosen People” applied only to them. All of humanity had been created and called by God (whether they would follow Him or not) to be His beloved children. And so Peter calls the public life of Jesus back to the minds of these Gentiles, starting with His visit to his cousin John the Baptist. Peter declares: Come to Him! And, in the following verses, the same Holy Spirit that descended upon Jesus at the Jordan and upon Peter and the disciples at Pentecost would come upon Cornelius and his household. The “new Israel” was taking shape.
Gospel: Matthew 3:13-17
A reading from the holy gospel according to Matthew. Glory to You, Lord.
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ.
Meditation: All four Gospel writers report on Jesus' baptism. The scene is intimately familiar to Christians. And yet we still ask with John the Baptist: Why have You come to be baptized, when You of all people have absolutely nothing to confess? What does Jesus mean by saying that He must undergo John's symbolic baptism of repentance “to fulfill all righteousness”?
As the Lord would soon say in the Sermon on the Mount, He had come as the epitome of all to which the Mosaic Law pointed and the prophets had foretold. How do we find our way back to God? Through repentance. Through conversion. Through leaving behind our old self-centered ways and living in a new way.
This is what John's baptism symbolized – and its symbolism itself would be fulfilled in the Sacrament of Baptism, initiated by Christ's command to His disciples. Through this Baptism, we receive the very Spirit who descended upon Jesus in the Jordan – the divine nature without which we cannot hope to live and love as God does and as He desires us to do.
Jesus' entire life and mission was to demonstrate such all-encompassing love, all the way to the cross, as one of us. His teaching began with this first public act. Upon its completion, those with eyes to see and ears to hear beheld something no one in Israel had seen before: the public revelation of the one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always and forever united in love.
Close with individual prayer, followed by Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be
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