Baptism of the Lord 2026
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7 Acts 10:34-38 Matthew 3:13-17
Today the special time of Epiphany ends. This time in the Church’s year includes celebrating the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. This revelation of Jesus was made to the shepherds by the angels. On the feast of the Epiphany Jesus is revealed to the Gentiles as God and King.
During this special time in the Church we are drawn to give special glory and praise to the one who has come as our Messiah. We commemorate the first weeks of the Life of Jesus. And then there is nothing about him until he is twelve years old. When he is twelve years old his parents bring him up to Jerusalem where he gets lost! After finding him in the temple teaching the people, his parents take him back to Nazareth and we hear nothing about him for the next 18 years.
What happened during those 18 years? What did the shepherds and the wise men remember? Did those who heard him in the temple remember him or wonder what ever became of him? Simeon, Anna, Elizabeth and Zachariah had died.
What led John the Baptist out into the desert or to the river Jordan? How aware was John of who Jesus really was?
There was need for another Epiphany. This time it would be revealed that Jesus would be a servant, a saviour, a minister to God’s people. And, to be a servant, he needed to identify with us, with human beings, with sinners. And so He went down into the muddy water of the River Jordan to be with us, to experience our world, to identify with our human nature.
On St Stephen’s day 1958 Pope Saint John XXIII visited Regina Coeli prison in Rome. He greeted the prisoners “You could not come to visit me so, I have come to visit you!” When he saw the sad and broken prisoners before him, he felt a lump in his throat and he was unable to deliver the speech that he had prepared. Eventually he began to speak to them from the heart and said ‘Men, I have come here today to put my eyes into your eyes.’ Years later, a prisoner described how he had been liberated that day.
In a sense that is what the Lord was doing at His Baptism – putting his humanity into our humanity! Identifying with us, sinners, though He had no sin.
In the ‘Epiphany’ that we celebrate today it is the Father who reveals Jesus to us – ‘This is my beloved Son’ and then instructs us ‘Listen to Him’.
John the Baptist plays his part in this manifestation of the Messiah. In John’s Gospel, John the Baptist points to Jesus as he joins the crowd at the Jordan - ‘There is one among you … He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit’
Two disciples then ask Jesus where he lives and are invited to ‘Come and See’. It is an invitation to come and listen, learn, be formed in the ways of the Lord.
We too, are invited to the same place and space to see, hear and come to know the Lord Jesus. We need to allow Him to show himself to us.
This is our personal Epiphany – the Lord reveals Himself in the intimacy of His presence.