Reading I Is 42:1-4, 6-7 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.
Psalms 104:1B-2, 3-4, 24-25, 27-28, 29-30 R. (1) O bless the Lord, my soul.
1B O LORD, my God, you are great indeed! you are clothed with majesty and glory, 2 robed in light as with a cloak. You have spread out the heavens like a tent-cloth; R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
3 You have constructed your palace upon the waters. You make the clouds your chariot; you travel on the wings of the wind. 4 You make the winds your messengers, and flaming fire your ministers. R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
24 How manifold are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you have wrought them all– the earth is full of your creatures; 25 the sea also, great and wide, in which are schools without number of living things both small and great. R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
27 They look to you to give them food in due time. 28 When you give it to them, they gather it; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
29 If you take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust. 30 When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
2nd Reading – ACTS 10:34-38 34 Peter proceeded to speak to those gathered in the house of Cornelius, saying: “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.
35 Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.
36 You know the word that he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all,
37 what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached,
38 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.
Luke 3:16 R. Alleluia, alleluia. 16 John said: One mightier than I is coming; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Luke 3:15-16, 21-22 15 The people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.
16 John answered them all, saying, “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
21 After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened
22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
The Gospel of today’s Liturgy shows us the scene with which Jesus’ public life begins: he, who is the Son of God and the Messiah, goes to the banks of the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. After about 30 years of hidden life, Jesus does not present himself with a miracle, or by rising to the podium to teach. He queues up with the people who were going to receive baptism from John. Today’s liturgical hymn says that the people went to be baptized with a bare soul and bare feet, humbly. This is a beautiful attitude: with a bare soul and bare feet. And Jesus shares the plight of us sinners, he descends towards us; he descends into the river, and into the wounded history of humanity. He immerses himself in our waters to heal them, and he immerses himself with us, in our midst. He does not rise up above us, but rather comes down towards us with a bare soul, with bare feet, like the people. He does not go on his own, nor with a selected, privileged group. No: he goes with the people. He belongs to those people and he goes with them to be baptized, with those humble people.
Let us reflect on an important point: in the moment that Jesus receives Baptism, the text says that he “was praying” (Lk 3:21). It is good for us to contemplate this: Jesus prays. But why? He, who is the Lord, the Son of God, prays like us? Yes, Jesus — the Gospels repeat this many times — spends a lot of time in prayer: at the beginning of every day, often at night, before making important decisions.... His prayer is a dialogue, a relationship with the Father. Thus, in today’s Gospel, we can see the “two moments” in the life of Jesus: on the one hand, he descends towards us into the waters of the Jordan; on the other, he raises his eyes and his heart, praying to the Father.
It is a great lesson for us: we are all immersed in the problems of life and in many complicated situations, called upon to face difficult moments and choices that get us down. But if we do not want to be crushed, we need to raise everything upwards. And this is exactly what prayer does. It is not an escape route; prayer is not a magic ritual or a repetition of memorized refrains. No. To pray is the way to let God act within us, to understand what he wants to communicate to us even in the most difficult situations, to pray to have the strength to go forward. Many people feel they cannot go on, and pray: “Lord, give me the strength to continue”. We too, very often, have done this. Prayer helps us because it unites us to God, it opens us up to the encounter with him. Yes, prayer is the key that opens our heart to the Lord. It is dialoguing with God, it is listening to his Word, it is worshipping: remaining in silence, entrusting what we are experiencing to him. And sometimes it is also crying out to him like Job, venting with Him. Crying out like Job; He is the father; He understands well. He never gets angry with us. And Jesus prays.
--->Prayer — to use a beautiful image from today’s Gospel — “opens the heaven” (cf. v. 21). Prayer opens the heaven: it gives life oxygen, it gives a breath of fresh air even in the midst of breathlessness and lets us see things from a broader perspective. Above all, it enables us to have the same experience of Jesus by the Jordan: it makes us feel like beloved children of the Father. When we pray, the Father says to us too, as he does to Jesus in the Gospel: “You are my beloved Son” (cf. v. 22). Being God’s children began on the day of our Baptism, which immersed us in Christ and, as members of the people of God, made us become beloved children of the Father. Let us not forget the date of our Baptism! If I were to ask each one of you now: what is the date of your Baptism? Perhaps some of you do not remember. This is a beautiful thing: remembering the date of your baptism because it is our rebirth, the moment in which we became children of God with Jesus! And when you return home — if you do not know — ask your mother, your aunt, or your grandparents: “When was I baptized?”, and remember that date so as to celebrate it, to thank the Lord. And today, at this moment, let us ask ourselves: how is my prayer going? Do I pray out of habit, do I pray unwillingly, just reciting formulas, or is my prayer an encounter with God? I, a sinner, always with the people of God, never isolated? Do I cultivate intimacy with God, dialogue with him, listen to his Word? Among the many things we do each day, let us not neglect prayer: let us dedicate time to it, let us use short invocations to be repeated often, let us read the Gospel every day. The prayer that opens the heaven.
And now, let us turn to Our Lady, the prayerful Virgin, who made her life into a hymn in praise of God.
ANGELUS 13 January 2013 Dear Brothers and Sisters,
With this Sunday following the Epiphany the Christmas Season draws to a close: the time of light, the light of Christ who appears, like the new sun on the horizon of humanity, dispelling the shadows of evil and ignorance. We celebrate today the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus: that Child, Son of the Virgin, whom we contemplated in the mystery of his Birth. We behold him today as an adult immersing himself in the waters of the River Jordan and thereby sanctifying all water and the whole world, as the Eastern Tradition stresses. But why did Jesus, in whom there is no shadow of sin, go to be baptized by John? Why did he perform that gesture of penitence and conversion, beside all those people who in this way were trying to prepare for the coming of the Messiah? That gesture — which marks the start of Christ’s public life — comes in continuity with the Incarnation, the descent of God from the highest heaven into the abyss of hell. The meaning of this movement of divine lowering is expressed in a single word: love, the very name of God. The Apostle John writes: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him”, and he sent him “to be the expiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:9-10). That is why the first public act of Jesus was to receive baptism from John, who, seeing him approaching, said: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29).
Luke the Evangelist recounts that while Jesus, having received baptism, “was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased’” (3:21-22). This Jesus is the Son of God who is totally immersed in the will of the Father’s love. This Jesus is the One who will die on the cross and rise again through the power of the same Spirit who now descends upon him and consecrates him. This Jesus is the new man who wills to live as the son of God, that is, in love; the man who in the face of the evil of the world, by choosing the path of humility and responsibility he chooses not to save himself but to offer his own life for truth and justice. Being Christian means living like this, but this kind of life involves a rebirth: to be reborn from on high, from God, from Grace. This rebirth is the Baptism, which Christ gives to the Church in order to regenerate men and women to new life. An ancient text attributed to St Hippolytus states: “Whoever goes down into these waters of rebirth with faith renounces the devil and pledges himself to Christ. He repudiates the enemy and confesses that Christ is God, throws off his servitude, and is raised to filial status” Discourse on the Epiphany, 10: PG 10, 862).
Following tradition, this morning I had the joy of baptizing a large group of infants who were born in the past three or four months. At this moment, I would like to extend my prayers and my blessing to all newborn babes; but above all I would like to invite you all to remember your own Baptism, the spiritual rebirth that opened the way to eternal life to us. May every Christian, in this Year of Faith, rediscover the beauty of being reborn from on high, from the love of God, and live as a child of God.
FAUSTS - Through John, Luke wants to guide the Christian to welcome the Lord who comes. It can be said that in the figure of John a sketch of Christian anthropology is made: it describes how one must understand man in relation to Christ, who comes to give him his true identity as a son of God. God's promise should not be diminished. It is over every expectation of man. This must continually become greater in order to be "waiting for God". The function of the Baptist is to keep it always open, so that he does not reduce the gift and glory of God to the level of a simple human hope. John explains that he does not raise man to God. He simply immerses him in his truth, in the water of his limit and of his death, in his created nature, waiting for the strongest come. This one will immerse him in the Holy Spirit, in the very life of God. This and nothing else is man's salvation: to participate in God's life, in the fire of His Light. It is about the Baptism of the people and of Jesus. Luke first of all recalls that Jesus prayed. It is a theme that the evangelist develops in all his work. The enlightenment, already given in Baptism to every believer, is kindled and maintained in prayer. It realizes the new relationship that there is with God, the relationship of Son and Father, it is the place of the experience of the Holy Spirit, life and love of God, a gift infallibly connected to it. To pray is to return to God. Prayer is the breath of life as a son of God in which Baptism has placed us. Without prayer, our divine sonship, instead of sinking and developing to its full extent, is atrophied and falls upon itself. The result of Jesus' prayer is that heaven was opened. The sky had closed on earth because of the disobedience of Adam, who had closed his heart to God. The Prophet's great desire was for God to tear through the sky, His dress and His veil: "If you would tear the heavens open and come down!" (Is 63:19) Now this desire is fulfilled. In Jesus' obedience, the heaven opened up to the earth. Now this God, whose delight is to be with the children of men, descends definitively among us in the person of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God (Spirit = life, Holy = of God). The physical figure of this Spirit - or His Descent - is like a dove. This fluttering of the dove over the newly Baptized recalls that of the Spirit of God over the waters of primordial chaos. It is also an allusion to Noah, the father of those saved from the water, who eagerly awaits the return of the dove that announces to him the end of the flood. And a voice from heaven came, the definitive voice of God, of that God who had no face, the voice that expresses the Word, who is His obedient Son. The eternal Word of God resounds in time: the Spirit has descended upon Jesus, in Him the Father recognizes His Son, the liberating Messiah, the "Beloved" unique Son of His Heart. His Public Life, contained between Baptism and Ascension, is God's window on the world. The witness of the disciples will serve to bring, through the proclamation, all men to this light of God.
The Baptism of the Lord
RispondiEliminaLectionary: 21
Reading I
Is 42:1-4, 6-7
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.
Psalms 104:1B-2, 3-4, 24-25, 27-28, 29-30
R. (1) O bless the Lord, my soul.
1B O LORD, my God, you are great indeed!
you are clothed with majesty and glory,
2 robed in light as with a cloak.
You have spread out the heavens like a tent-cloth;
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
3 You have constructed your palace upon the waters.
You make the clouds your chariot;
you travel on the wings of the wind.
4 You make the winds your messengers,
and flaming fire your ministers.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
24 How manifold are your works, O LORD!
In wisdom you have wrought them all–
the earth is full of your creatures;
25 the sea also, great and wide,
in which are schools without number
of living things both small and great.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
27 They look to you to give them food in due time.
28 When you give it to them, they gather it;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
29 If you take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust.
30 When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
R. O bless the Lord, my soul.
2nd Reading – ACTS 10:34-38
34 Peter proceeded to speak to those gathered in the house of Cornelius, saying: “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.
35 Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.
36 You know the word that he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all,
37 what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism
that John preached,
38 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.
Luke 3:16
EliminaR. Alleluia, alleluia.
16 John said: One mightier than I is coming;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
15 The people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.
16 John answered them all, saying, “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
21 After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened
22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
POPE FRANCIS
EliminaANGELUS 9 January 2022
Dear brothers and sisters, buongiorno!
The Gospel of today’s Liturgy shows us the scene with which Jesus’ public life begins: he, who is the Son of God and the Messiah, goes to the banks of the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. After about 30 years of hidden life, Jesus does not present himself with a miracle, or by rising to the podium to teach. He queues up with the people who were going to receive baptism from John. Today’s liturgical hymn says that the people went to be baptized with a bare soul and bare feet, humbly. This is a beautiful attitude: with a bare soul and bare feet. And Jesus shares the plight of us sinners, he descends towards us; he descends into the river, and into the wounded history of humanity. He immerses himself in our waters to heal them, and he immerses himself with us, in our midst. He does not rise up above us, but rather comes down towards us with a bare soul, with bare feet, like the people. He does not go on his own, nor with a selected, privileged group. No: he goes with the people. He belongs to those people and he goes with them to be baptized, with those humble people.
Let us reflect on an important point: in the moment that Jesus receives Baptism, the text says that he “was praying” (Lk 3:21). It is good for us to contemplate this: Jesus prays. But why? He, who is the Lord, the Son of God, prays like us? Yes, Jesus — the Gospels repeat this many times — spends a lot of time in prayer: at the beginning of every day, often at night, before making important decisions.... His prayer is a dialogue, a relationship with the Father. Thus, in today’s Gospel, we can see the “two moments” in the life of Jesus: on the one hand, he descends towards us into the waters of the Jordan; on the other, he raises his eyes and his heart, praying to the Father.
It is a great lesson for us: we are all immersed in the problems of life and in many complicated situations, called upon to face difficult moments and choices that get us down. But if we do not want to be crushed, we need to raise everything upwards. And this is exactly what prayer does. It is not an escape route; prayer is not a magic ritual or a repetition of memorized refrains. No. To pray is the way to let God act within us, to understand what he wants to communicate to us even in the most difficult situations, to pray to have the strength to go forward. Many people feel they cannot go on, and pray: “Lord, give me the strength to continue”. We too, very often, have done this. Prayer helps us because it unites us to God, it opens us up to the encounter with him. Yes, prayer is the key that opens our heart to the Lord. It is dialoguing with God, it is listening to his Word, it is worshipping: remaining in silence, entrusting what we are experiencing to him. And sometimes it is also crying out to him like Job, venting with Him. Crying out like Job; He is the father; He understands well. He never gets angry with us. And Jesus prays.
--->Prayer — to use a beautiful image from today’s Gospel — “opens the heaven” (cf. v. 21). Prayer opens the heaven: it gives life oxygen, it gives a breath of fresh air even in the midst of breathlessness and lets us see things from a broader perspective. Above all, it enables us to have the same experience of Jesus by the Jordan: it makes us feel like beloved children of the Father. When we pray, the Father says to us too, as he does to Jesus in the Gospel: “You are my beloved Son” (cf. v. 22). Being God’s children began on the day of our Baptism, which immersed us in Christ and, as members of the people of God, made us become beloved children of the Father. Let us not forget the date of our Baptism! If I were to ask each one of you now: what is the date of your Baptism? Perhaps some of you do not remember. This is a beautiful thing: remembering the date of your baptism because it is our rebirth, the moment in which we became children of God with Jesus! And when you return home — if you do not know — ask your mother, your aunt, or your grandparents: “When was I baptized?”, and remember that date so as to celebrate it, to thank the Lord. And today, at this moment, let us ask ourselves: how is my prayer going? Do I pray out of habit, do I pray unwillingly, just reciting formulas, or is my prayer an encounter with God? I, a sinner, always with the people of God, never isolated? Do I cultivate intimacy with God, dialogue with him, listen to his Word? Among the many things we do each day, let us not neglect prayer: let us dedicate time to it, let us use short invocations to be repeated often, let us read the Gospel every day. The prayer that opens the heaven.
EliminaAnd now, let us turn to Our Lady, the prayerful Virgin, who made her life into a hymn in praise of God.
BENEDICT XVI
RispondiEliminaANGELUS 13 January 2013
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
With this Sunday following the Epiphany the Christmas Season draws to a close: the time of light, the light of Christ who appears, like the new sun on the horizon of humanity, dispelling the shadows of evil and ignorance. We celebrate today the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus: that Child, Son of the Virgin, whom we contemplated in the mystery of his Birth. We behold him today as an adult immersing himself in the waters of the River Jordan and thereby sanctifying all water and the whole world, as the Eastern Tradition stresses. But why did Jesus, in whom there is no shadow of sin, go to be baptized by John? Why did he perform that gesture of penitence and conversion, beside all those people who in this way were trying to prepare for the coming of the Messiah? That gesture — which marks the start of Christ’s public life — comes in continuity with the Incarnation, the descent of God from the highest heaven into the abyss of hell. The meaning of this movement of divine lowering is expressed in a single word: love, the very name of God. The Apostle John writes: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him”, and he sent him “to be the expiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:9-10). That is why the first public act of Jesus was to receive baptism from John, who, seeing him approaching, said: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29).
Luke the Evangelist recounts that while Jesus, having received baptism, “was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased’” (3:21-22). This Jesus is the Son of God who is totally immersed in the will of the Father’s love. This Jesus is the One who will die on the cross and rise again through the power of the same Spirit who now descends upon him and consecrates him. This Jesus is the new man who wills to live as the son of God, that is, in love; the man who in the face of the evil of the world, by choosing the path of humility and responsibility he chooses not to save himself but to offer his own life for truth and justice. Being Christian means living like this, but this kind of life involves a rebirth: to be reborn from on high, from God, from Grace. This rebirth is the Baptism, which Christ gives to the Church in order to regenerate men and women to new life. An ancient text attributed to St Hippolytus states: “Whoever goes down into these waters of rebirth with faith renounces the devil and pledges himself to Christ. He repudiates the enemy and confesses that Christ is God, throws off his servitude, and is raised to filial status” Discourse on the Epiphany, 10: PG 10, 862).
Following tradition, this morning I had the joy of baptizing a large group of infants who were born in the past three or four months. At this moment, I would like to extend my prayers and my blessing to all newborn babes; but above all I would like to invite you all to remember your own Baptism, the spiritual rebirth that opened the way to eternal life to us. May every Christian, in this Year of Faith, rediscover the beauty of being reborn from on high, from the love of God, and live as a child of God.
FAUSTS - Through John, Luke wants to guide the Christian to welcome the Lord who comes.
RispondiEliminaIt can be said that in the figure of John a sketch of Christian anthropology is made: it describes how one must understand man in relation to Christ, who comes to give him his true identity as a son of God. God's promise should not be diminished. It is over every expectation of man.
This must continually become greater in order to be "waiting for God".
The function of the Baptist is to keep it always open, so that he does not reduce the gift and glory of God to the level of a simple human hope.
John explains that he does not raise man to God. He simply immerses him in his truth, in the water of his limit and of his death, in his created nature, waiting for the strongest come. This one will immerse him in the Holy Spirit, in the very life of God.
This and nothing else is man's salvation: to participate in God's life, in the fire of His Light.
It is about the Baptism of the people and of Jesus. Luke first of all recalls that Jesus prayed. It is a theme that the evangelist develops in all his work.
The enlightenment, already given in Baptism to every believer, is kindled and maintained in prayer. It realizes the new relationship that there is with God, the relationship of Son and Father, it is the place of the experience of the Holy Spirit, life and love of God, a gift infallibly connected to it.
To pray is to return to God. Prayer is the breath of life as a son of God in which Baptism has placed us. Without prayer, our divine sonship, instead of sinking and developing to its full extent, is atrophied and falls upon itself.
The result of Jesus' prayer is that heaven was opened.
The sky had closed on earth because of the disobedience of Adam, who had closed his heart to God. The Prophet's great desire was for God to tear through the sky, His dress and His veil: "If you would tear the heavens open and come down!" (Is 63:19) Now this desire is fulfilled.
In Jesus' obedience, the heaven opened up to the earth.
Now this God, whose delight is to be with the children of men, descends definitively among us in the person of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God (Spirit = life, Holy = of God). The physical figure of this Spirit - or His Descent - is like a dove.
This fluttering of the dove over the newly Baptized recalls that of the Spirit of God over the waters of primordial chaos. It is also an allusion to Noah, the father of those saved from the water, who eagerly awaits the return of the dove that announces to him the end of the flood.
And a voice from heaven came, the definitive voice of God, of that God who had no face, the voice that expresses the Word, who is His obedient Son. The eternal Word of God resounds in time: the Spirit has descended upon Jesus, in Him the Father recognizes His Son, the liberating Messiah, the "Beloved" unique Son of His Heart.
His Public Life, contained between Baptism and Ascension, is God's window on the world. The witness of the disciples will serve to bring, through the proclamation, all men to this light of God.