Here's to New Beginnings

Jan. 12, 2025
The final Sunday of the Christmas season and the First Sunday of Ordinary Time are both the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord. In this scene, we encounter the adult Jesus for the first time, as He comes to the Jordan, where His cousin, John the Baptist, is baptizing in the river. The last time we saw Him was at the age of 10 when Mary and Joseph searched frantically for three days for him in Jerusalem.
   
All four Gospels begin the adult life and ministry at this point, His baptism. Luke’s account of the baptism, which we read from today, is very succinct— “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too.” Then we are told that as He was praying, presumably after having been baptized, “heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.”

This is the only scene in all of Scripture where we see all three Persons of the Blessed Trinity present and active. We hear the Trinitarian formula in the Great Commission, but here we have the First Person (the Father), the Second Person (the Son) and the Third Person (the Holy Spirit).
   
When we are baptized, we encounter these same three persons. We are adopted by God as His sons and daughters. We officially become disciples of Jesus Christ. And we are made temples of the Holy Spirit. Original Sin, through which we are born separated and alienated from God, is wiped away, and if we are older, all personal sin is washed away as well. We begin our life as members of the Catholic Church, as baptism is the first of the three Sacraments of Initiation (Confirmation and Eucharist are the other two).
—Fr. Mike Comer