Sunday,
1/12/13
Today,
in celebrating the Baptism of Jesus we repeat last Sunday’s feast of the
Epiphany of the Lord, with the word epiphany meaning revealing greatness which
had been hidden. Many Eastern Catholics see the Baptism of Jesus as the best
expression of the Epiphany. They hear the Father announcing, ”This is my
beloved Son on whom I am well pleased.”
The
scene is precious, with Jesus bare to the waist, and standing waist deep in the
Jordan. I once had my niece paint a watercolor of Jesus that way, and I tacked
it to the blackboard of the room where I was teaching.
There is
a second great Christian truth expressed in the Baptism of Jesus. In his Letter
to the Ephesians St. Paul said he was given the privilege of announcing God’s
secret plan for mankind. He said God secret plan was to “Sum up all things in
Christ.” In other words, God’s plan was to have all of human history summed up
in Jesus. Just as the Israelites passed through the Red Sea, then spent forty
years in the desert, so Jesus comes up from the water was to spend forty days
in the desert. He was re-living Jewish history in miniature.
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