January 11, 2026
The Baptism of the Lord
Lectionary:
21
Reading
I
Thus
says the LORD:
Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,
upon whom I have put my spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations,
not crying out, not shouting,
not making his voice heard in the street.
a bruised reed he shall not break,
and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,
until he establishes justice on the earth;
the coastlands will wait for his teaching.
I,
the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice,
I have grasped you by the hand;
I formed you, and set you
as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.
Responsorial
Psalm
R.
(11b) The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Give to the LORD, you sons of God,
give to the LORD glory and praise,
Give to the LORD the glory due his name;
adore the LORD in holy attire.
R. The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters,
the LORD, over vast waters.
The voice of the LORD is mighty;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
R. The Lord will bless his people with peace.
The God of glory thunders,
and in his temple all say, “Glory!”
The LORD is enthroned above the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as king forever.
R. The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Reading
II
Peter
proceeded to speak to those gathered
in the house of Cornelius, saying:
“In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.
Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly
is acceptable to him.
You know the word that he sent to the Israelites
as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all,
what has happened all over Judea,
beginning in Galilee after the baptism
that John preached,
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Spirit and power.
He went about doing good
and healing all those oppressed by the devil,
for God was with him.”
Alleluia
R. Alleluia,
alleluia.
The heavens were opened and the voice of the Father thundered:
This is my beloved Son, listen to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus
came from Galilee to John at the Jordan
to be baptized by him.
John tried to prevent him, saying,
“I need to be baptized by you,
and yet you are coming to me?”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us
to fulfill all righteousness.”
Then he allowed him.
After Jesus was baptized,
he came up from the water and behold,
the heavens were opened for him,
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and coming upon him.
And a voice came from the heavens, saying,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011126.cfm
Commentary on Isaiah 42:1-4,6-7; Acts 10:34-38; Matthew 3:13-17
Today brings to an
end our Christmas celebrations. We see the third and last of the three great
manifestations by which were made known to us that our God had come among us in
a very special way. As mentioned in a recent commentary, the sign that Jesus gave
in Cana is also a special manifestation of God’s presence in Jesus, and may be
considered a fourth manifestation.
Of the three, the
first of these manifestations was through the story of the birth of Jesus in
the stable at Bethlehem. The first people privileged to experience this
manifestation were the shepherds, representing the poor, the sinful, and the
social outcasts on whom Luke’s Gospel is especially focused.
The second
manifestation, the Epiphany, celebrated this past week, reflects Matthew’s emphasis
that Jesus was born not only for his own people, but for people of every
country and every race everywhere.
This third
manifestation of God’s presence among us through Jesus, depicted in today’s
Gospel, is found in all four Gospels. While the first two manifestations are
linked with the birth of Jesus, this one comes at a much later date, at the
moment when Jesus is about to begin his public life.
Why baptise
Jesus?
We might very well wonder, like John the Baptist did, why Jesus needed to be
baptised. John said to Jesus:
I need to be
baptized by you, and do you come to me?
All those others
being baptised in the Jordan by John were doing so as a sign of repentance for
their sins, and as an expression of their desire to turn around their lives.
How could Jesus, the Son of God, be part of this?
The first answer to
this question is that Jesus, in so doing, was expressing his total solidarity
with the human race, of which he was a member. He identified with them, not as
a sinner, but as a fellow human being. The expression of that solidarity is a
much higher priority for him than any social status he might lose by being seen
in the close company of confessed sinners. It was a risk he would constantly
take because the needs of the sinner were more important to him than his
reputation with the self-righteous. It will have its final dramatic expression
as Jesus dies on a cross, executed with, and like, two convicted criminals. For
Jesus, there was never such a thing as ‘face’, i.e. being valued purely on
external appearance.
A ‘missioning’
experience
However, in order to understand what is happening at the River Jordan, we have
to go far beyond seeing Jesus’ baptism as a matter of dealing with
sinfulness. What is being really emphasised here is the positive element
of Jesus’ being totally accepted and confirmed by his Father. Jesus, as he
stands there in the River Jordan, is being ‘missioned’ by his Father for the
work he is just about to begin. He is here getting the total endorsement of his
Father for that work.
As he steps out of
the water, the heavens open and the Spirit of God comes down on Jesus to fill
him with all God’s fullness.
This is my Son, the
Beloved [Greek, agapetos—the object of God’s agape, his
outpouring love], with whom I am well pleased.
This, we might say,
is Jesus’ Pentecost experience. It is what the baptism in the Jordan is really
about. And it is something that only those with eyes of faith can see. We might
also add that this is what our Baptism is really about.
Baptism and
anointing
In the Second Reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter in his sermon to Cornelius,
the first Gentile to be baptised by the Apostles, says that:
…God anointed Jesus
of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power…
In the case of
Jesus’ baptism by John, the anointing is by water. The anointing of Jesus by
God, of which Peter speaks, implies that Jesus is being made King and Lord, and
Kings were typically anointed with oil. The title ‘Christ’
[Greek, Christos] which we give him, means ‘The Anointed One’, and
corresponds to the Hebrew word we write as Messiah. Finally, as we said
earlier, this scene is also a ‘missioning’ ceremony for Jesus as he embarks on
his public life.
‘My servant’
All this is beautifully described in the passage from Isaiah which is the First
Reading for today’s feast. The opening words echo Matthew’s description of the
baptism scene:
Here is my
servant…my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him…
The mission that
will be Jesus’ is then spelt out in some beautiful phrases over which we could
reflect with great profit. The prophet writes:
- He will not cry out or lift up his
voice…
- …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 grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in
the earth…
- I have called you in
righteousness… [i.e. to serve the cause of right]
- 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.
Those final phrases
will be quoted by Jesus himself as the proclamation of his mission in the
synagogue of his home town, Nazareth (Luke 4:18-20).
All of this is
contained in this simple but majestic scene with John the Baptist in the River
Jordan. It is, as already said, a great manifestation of God’s presence among
us through the Person of Jesus our King and Lord.
Our own baptism
As a final reflection, it would be useful for us today to reflect on the
meaning of our own baptism and how it relates with that of Jesus.
We often hear a
very simplistic description of the effects of the Sacrament of Baptism as
“taking away original sin and making us children of God”. Many, especially
those baptised as infants, may see it as a one-off ceremony, imposed on them by
parents to bind them to a way of life in which they have no further say.
People have even
been heard to say, “Oh! I wish I hadn’t been born a Catholic!” After honest
reflection, some people may choose to renounce their Catholic faith in favour
of a way of life which they feel is more meaningful to them. However, if one
truly understands the full meaning of our baptism, this is unlikely to happen.
Baptism is not, as
is true of all the Sacraments, an isolated ritual. It takes place in the
context of our whole life. Whether we are baptised as children or as adults,
what primarily is happening is that we become incorporated, ’em-bodied’, into
the Christian community.
We become—not
passively, but actively—members of the Body of Christ. It can never be
something imposed on us against our will. That is why, for adults, there is now
a long process of initiation leading up to Baptism and, hopefully a further
process of community support after the Baptism has taken place.
It is why adult
baptism is now celebrated in the presence of the whole parish community and at
the Easter Vigil. ‘Original sin’ is taken away, not so much by some spiritual
sleight of hand or by the mumbling of some magic formula. Rather, if one
becomes truly incorporated into a living Christian community, the sinful
influences that pervade our world become reversed by our exposure to the vision
of Jesus and the lived experience of a community based on love, justice and
sharing.
A social event
Baptism does not, and cannot, produce its effects in a social vacuum. That is
why the Church will not baptise those who have no likelihood of experiencing
Christian community.
Then, of course,
like Jesus, our baptism brings with it a serious obligation to share our faith
with others both by word and example. It involves much more than simply ‘saving
our souls’ and ‘leading sinless lives’.
We are called to be
living witnesses of the gospel, to be the salt of the earth, to be a city on a
hill, a candle radiating light in the surrounding darkness. We are called, in
short, to be united with the others in our Christian community in the building
up of God’s Kingdom. Sadly, one wonders how often this is the reality, when one
sees so many Catholics acting like total strangers to each other at a Sunday
parish Eucharist!
All those words of
Isaiah, quoted above and applied to Jesus, are to be applied to each one of us
as well. Our baptism is not simply some past event recorded in some dusty
parish register. It is a living reality which is to be constantly deepened and
enriched.
Let God our Father
be able to say of us as he said of Jesus:
This is my Son, the
Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.
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Sunday, January 11, 2026
Feast – The Baptism of Jesus
Opening Prayer
“We praise you, invisible Father, giver of
immortality: you are the source of life, the source of light, the source of
every grace and truth, lover of humankind and lover of the poor, who reconciles
all with you and draw all to you through the coming of your beloved Son. Make
us living people, grant us your Spirit of light so that we may know you, the
true One and the One whom you sent Jesus Christ.” (Serapion’s Anaphora)
Gospel Reading – Mt 3: 13-17
Introduction:
This Gospel fragment (Mt 3: 13-17) is part of
a narrative section of Matthew the Evangelist, the section that introduces the
public life of Jesus. After the flight into Egypt, Jesus lives in Nazareth.
Now, as an adult, we find him on the banks of the river Jordan. The meeting of
the two is part of the concluding section dedicated to John the Baptist. Anyone
who wishes to go deeper into the personality of John and his message (Mt 3:
1-12 has already been presented to us in the liturgy of the second Sunday of
Advent) needs to keep in mind the whole of chapter 3 of Matthew. Our passage
concentrates especially on the acknowledgement of the divinity of Christ at the
time of his baptism. God the Father reveals the identity of Jesus. A Division of the Text:
•
Matthew 3:13: setting
•
Matthew 3:14-15: dialogue John-Jesus
•
Matthew 3: 16-17: epiphany/theophany
Gospel Text - Matthew 3: 13-17
13 Then Jesus appeared: he came from Galilee
to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 John tried to dissuade him, with the
words, 'It is I who need baptism from you, and yet you come to me!' 15 But
Jesus replied, 'Leave it like this for the time being; it is fitting that we
should, in this way, do all that uprightness demands.' Then John gave in to
him. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, he at once came up from the water,
and suddenly the heavens opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a
dove and coming down on him. 17 And suddenly there was a voice from heaven,
'This is my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on him.'
A Moment of Silent Prayer
so that the Word of God may penetrate our hearts and
enlighten our lives.
Some Questions
to help us in our meditation and prayer.
•
Why does Jesus “appear” after his hidden life in
Nazareth?
•
How does awareness of his identity and mission
grow?
•
Have I, at some time, taken on something new in
my life?
•
Who or which experience has most revealed to me
my identity, vocation and mission?
•
What does the memory of my baptism mean to me?
Meditation
A Key to the Reading:
Together with a historical-chronological reading of the
passage, the episode of the baptism of Jesus and his meeting with John before
he begins his public life, we need to keep in mind also a symbolical reading,
assisted by the Fathers of the East, a symbolism that is the framework of this
liturgical season of Christmas and which concludes with the full manifestation
of God as man: a synthesis of the manifestation-epiphany of the Son of God in
the flesh. A Commentary on the Text:
•
Mt 13: 13 The adult Jesus
After John “appears” on the scene (13: 1), Jesus of
Nazareth, where he spent his childhood and early youth (Mt 12: 23), goes to the
river Jordan. As a good Israelite, he watches the authentic religious movements
that spring up among the people. He shows that he approves of the work of John
and decides to be baptized with water, not, of course, to receive forgiveness
for sins, but to unite himself and share fully in the expectations and hopes of
all men and women. It is not humankind that goes to Him, but He who goes
towards humankind, according to the logic of the incarnation.
•
Mt 13: 14-15 the dialogue of John with Jesus
John’s attempt to prevent the baptism of Jesus is his
acknowledgement of the difference between the two and an awareness of the new
(the New Covenant) making its appearance. “The one who follows me… will baptise
you with the Holy Spirit and fire… his winnowing-fan is in his hand… will
clear… will gather… will burn…” (vv. 11-12). Jesus’ attitude is still one of
submitting to God’s saving plan (in this way, do all that righteousness demands),
respecting the manner (in humility-kenosis) and the times (the time-kairos). We
also see the difference between the two from their families of origin (priestly
for John), from the places (Jerusalem for John, Nazareth for Jesus) from the
manner of conception (a proclamation to the father, Zachary, in the old style;
a proclamation to the mother, Mary), the parents’ ages (those of John old).
Everything points to the passage from the old to the new. Matthew prepares the
readers for the newness of the Christ: “you have heard it said, but I say to
you” (Mt 5).
•
Mt 13: 16-17 the presentation of God the Father
and the Holy Spirit
In Matthew’s Gospel we have the
solemn “adoration of the Magi” in acknowledgement of the royalty and divinity
of Jesus. Luke also adds the acknowledgement of Elisabeth (Lk 1:42-43), of the
angels (Lk 2:13-14) of the shepherds (Lk 2:20), and of the old Simeon and Anna
(Lk 2:30; 28). All the Evangelists record the proclamation of the divine
identity of Jesus by God the Father and the Holy Spirit present in the form of
a dove. Matthew says clearly “This is” not “you are” my Son, the Beloved. Jesus
is divine by nature and also the new Adam, the beginning of a new humanity
reconciled with God as well as nature reconciled with God by means of Christ’s
immersion in the waters. The heavens are reopened after being closed for such a
long time by sin, and earth is blessed.
The descent of Christ into the waters prefigures his
descent into hell and the words of the Psalmist come true (Ps 74: 13-14), he
crushes the head of the foe. The Baptism not only prefigures but inaugurates
and anticipates Satan’s defeat and the liberation of Adam.
However, it will not be easy to recognize
the Messiah in his weakness. John himself has some doubts when in prison, and
he sends his disciples to ask “are you the one who is to come or have we got to
wait for someone else?” (Mt 11:
3).
Deeper into the liturgical and ecumenical
aspects
In the tradition of the Eastern
churches, the Baptism of Jesus is the most important liturgical feast of the
Christmas cycle. On 6 January they celebrate together the baptism, birth, visit
of the Magi, the wedding feast of Cana, as one fact. Rather than the historical
development of the life of Jesus, they stress his theological-saving relevance.
They do not dwell on the sentimental aspect, but on the historical
manifestation of God and his acknowledgement as Lord. Cyril of Jerusalem says
that Jesus gives the waters of baptism “the color of his divinity” (III
mystagogic catechesis, 1).
Gregory Naziazen writes that the
creation of this world and the creation of the spiritual world, once foes,
reunite in friendship, and we humans, united in one choir with the angels,
partake of their praises (PG 46,599).
The descent into the waters
corresponds to the descent into the bowels of the earth symbolized by the birth
in a cave. The destructive waters become waters of salvation for the just.
The Old Testament readings of the
liturgical Vespers recall the saving waters: the Spirit hovers over the waters
at the time of creation (Gn 1), the waters of the Nile save Moses (Ex 2), the
waters open for the people of Israel to go through (Ex 14), the waters of Mara
become sweet (Ex 15), the waters of the Jordan open before the Arc (Jos 3), the
waters of the Jordan heal Naaman the leper (2Kings 5) etc. Jesus then at the
wedding feast in Cana transforms water into wine (Jn 2) as a sign that the time
of salvation has come.
At this feast in the eastern liturgy, there
is a tradition of blessing water in a spring or river by immersing the cross
three times (the triple baptismal immersion). This recalls the prophet Isaiah:
let the wilderness and the dry lands exult (Is 35: 1-10), come to the water all
you who are thirsty (Is 55: 1-13), draw water joyfully (Is 12: 3-6).
Psalm 114 (113)
Alleluia!
When Israel came out of Egypt,
the House of Jacob from a people
of foreign speech, Judah became his sanctuary,
and Israel his domain. The sea
fled at the sight, the Jordan turned back, the mountains skipped like rams, the
hills like sheep.
Sea, what makes you flee? Jordan,
why turn back?
Why skip like rams, you mountains? Why like sheep, you hills?
Tremble, earth, at the coming of the Lord, at the coming of
the God of Jacob, who turns rock into pool, flint into fountain.
Closing Prayer
Jesus, source of life, who comes to cancel
Adam’s sentence, in the Jordan you killed hatred; grant us the peace that is
beyond all thought. Resplendent Word sent by the Father, after you have
uprooted the sins of mortals, come and dissipate the long and sad hours of the
night, and by your baptism, let your children rise resplendent from the waves
of the Jordan. May the human race clothe itself in white, come out of the waters
as children of God and transform creation into the image of the creator. (From
oriental liturgical “chants”)
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