January 12, 2020

The Baptism of the Lord

On this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we conclude the Christmas season and enter, once again, into Ordinary Time. We will be in Ordinary Time until we begin the holy season of Lent on February 26.

Today we focus on the theophany of the Baptism of the Lord. That means the manifestation off all three persons of the Blessed Trinity. The Lord was baptized at the River Jordan by John the Baptist. There was the voice of God manifesting God the Father. The descending dove representing the Holy Spirit, and, of course, Jesus in the flesh who is the Son.

We believe in every baptism, the voice of the Father still resounds as he claims us as his children and says, “Behold my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” We are claimed by God in the sacrament to be his very own. Just like Jesus, coming out of the waters of baptism, went into the desert, to begin his mission of battling evil so once we are baptized God’s children, we are to live the mission he has entrusted to each of us. We, too, must grapple with the evil one, but we are strengthened by the grace of Christ who has already defeated the devil and is ready to help us in our own personal battle with sin.

The Lord Jesus was born into this world for a purpose and so is each and every one of us. St. John Neumann expressed the concept his way, “Everyone who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random, we are not here, that we may go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, toil for bread, eat and drink, laugh and joke, sin when we have a mind, and reform when we are tired of sinning, rear a family and die. God sees every one of us; He creates every soul…for a purpose. He needs, He designs to need, every one of us. He has an end for each of us; we are all equal in His sight; and we are placed in our different ranks and stations, not to get what we can out of them for ourselves, but to labor in them for Him. As Christ has His work, we too have ours; as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours also.”

St. John Neumann … (born March 28, 1811, Prachatice, Bohemia [now in Czech Republic]. After studies at the University of Prague, Neumann’s interest in missions in the United States took him to New York, where he was ordained in 1836. …In 1852 Pope Pius IX named him bishop of Philadelphia. Neumann spent the rest of his life building churches, schools, and asylums for his diocese. He was devoted to education and was the first ecclesiastic to organize a diocesan school system in the United States. Neumann was canonized in 1977 as the first U.S. male saint.   God love you,