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From the Pastor’s Desk
Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. As is still done in the Orthodox Church, today’s event from the Life of Christ was included in the celebrations of the Epiphany which along with the visit of the Magi incorporated Jesus’ first miracle at the Wedding Feast in Cana. It was Pope Pius XII who added today’s feast to the Church’s liturgical calendar in 1955.
In the years after the Second Vatican Council, the emphasis of today’s feast focused on our own reception of the Sacrament of Baptism as well as the responsibility to cooperate with the graces of Baptism in ministry and evangelization efforts. Today’s readings certainly give us much food for thought in this line: the servant of God who seeks to bring light, justice and peace in the passage from Isaiah and Peter’s exhortation from the Acts of the Apostles to recognize the preaching of the Word that needs to be accomplished in every age.
How are you doing in these areas of Christian living? Do you have a regular way in which you minister to others for their good and the building up of the Kingdom of God? Do you take opportunities to read and reflect upon the Word of God in the Bible as well as learn more through Faith Formation classes?
Living the grace of the Sacrament of Baptism requires cooperation and work on the part of each person who has been “baptized into Christ” (see Gal 3:27). Jesus submitted Himself to the baptism of John in order to identify with the People of the Covenant. How, in our Baptism, do we identify more and more with Christ?
Love,
Fr. Tom