Newsletter — The Baptism of the Lord – Year C 12th January 2025
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Throughout the Gospel of Luke, people question ‘who is this?’ when they encounter Jesus. The Pharisees (Luke 5:21), the dinner guests (Luke 7:49), the disciples (Luke 8:25), Herod (Luke 9:9) – all ask, ‘who is this?’
In fact, God himself has already given us the answer right at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry: ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’ (Luke 3:22). The reason that the Baptism of Jesus marks the end of the Christmas season, even though it happened decades after his birth, is that it is has traditionally been seen as the final stage in the unfolding of Jesus’s identity: in the manger of Bethlehem we meet the Word made flesh; at his baptism, it is revealed that he is the Beloved Son, he is the Love of God made visible, tangible, audible (remember when the Father again calls him his Beloved Son, at the Transfiguration, it is with the command ‘listen to him’). Being the beloved of the Father is more than a sentimental expression, it is, fundamentally, who Jesus is.
The Baptism of the Lord comes at this turning point of the liturgical year. Today we have received a revelation of Jesus’s identity; tomorrow, and for the rest of Ordinary Time, Lent, and Easter, we will see what it means in practice to have Love incarnate dwelling amongst us: his public mission is to bring God’s love where it is most needed in this world.
Our own baptism is modelled after Jesus’s. It is the moment when we first hear God say to each of us ‘you are my beloved son’, ‘you are my beloved daughter’. Living out our baptism every day means accepting that this is our deepest identity, and trying to show others, whatever their poverty and misery, that God delights in them, that with them he is well pleased.
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