BaptC19. Isaiah 40:1-2, 9-11. God makes the way ready for his people to return from their captivity in Babylon. God is the glorious savior of his people who benefit from their God’s power. He is not only awesome but gentle, loving and caring. “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.”

Luke 3:15-16, 21-22. The people were captivated by the severe holiness of John, asking him if he might be the messiah. “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming.” Continuing on, he said, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” The Messiah who is to come will give the Holy Spirit to lead the people to repentance while those who do not repent will be burned and consumed by an ‘unquenchable fire.’ In Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels Jesus is baptized by John; but in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is baptized after John’s ministry has ended because John has already been imprisoned by Herod before Jesus was baptized (Luke 3:20-21). In Luke’s Gospel after John’s ministry ended, Jesus’ ministry began. After Jesus “had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened 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 presence of God, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father’s verbal affirmation testified that this person, Jesus who appeared to the people, only in earthly human form is truly the divine Son of God. At Jesus’ death when “the centurion and the men with him who keeping watch over Jesus experienced the earthquake” and all the calamitous events that were happening, “they said, ‘truly, this was the Son of God!’”(Matthew 27:54) Jesus was the divine son of God, spoken of in the baptismal formula: “in the name of the Father and of the Son, and the holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19); but at the same he was the human son of God and of Mary. (Luke 1:35) Jesus was and is both human and divine. In his divinity the Son of God had no beginning, since divinity cannot be created; in his humanity he did have a beginning, then an end in his death on the cross and then a new beginning in his resurrection with a glorified body. Adam is called son of God because he was created by God to be a human being in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26 & Luke 3:38b). However, Adam had no existence before God created him, as did the Son of God.

Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7. Grace in Hebrew is said to mean favor, i.e. that is one who is graced has found favor with God. When, as Jesus says, “you are in me and I in you (John 14:20b), Jesus shares himself with us, i.e. his life, his love, his knowledge, his power, so that we grow more and more in the image and likeness of God. As I understand it, grace is that sharing of his divine self with us. In John 15:4a, Jesus says, “Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” In John 15:7, Jesus says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” “Because of his mercy, he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior so that we might be justified by his grace.”

Psalm 104. “O Lord, my God, you are great indeed! You are clothed with majesty and glory.” The Lord has shown by the infinite goodness of his works how glorious he is! Without him there is nothing that is good. “When you send forth your spirit,” “you renew the face of the earth.”

Epiph19

“Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance. Raise your eyes and look about; they all gather and come to you: your sons come from afar.” All nations come to worship Yahweh, not just a select Chosen People, the Jews. All peoples are God’s peoples.

Matthew 2:1-12. The magi come following the star that leads to the “newborn king of the Jews.” The star is the light that leads to Jesus. It shines for all peoples. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has no overcome it” (John 1: 5). King Herod was the darkness who wanted to extinguish the light but was destined to fail because the source of the light (God) is infinitely more powerful than the source of darkness (the devil). See how diabolic Herod is when he sends the magi to seek Jesus and says, “When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.” The darkness that is so deep seeks to devour the light that is the Christ. The non-Jews, the magi, “prostrated themselves and did him homage. They opened their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.” The star was God’s way of inviting in the Gentiles to take Jesus as their Messiah. They followed the light sent by God to lead them to eternal life. The Holy Spirit does that for us daily. “What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race” (John 1: 3c-4).

Hebrews 1:1-6. “The mystery was made known to me by revelation. It was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body.” The revelation is the light that takes away the darkness. Jesus is the revelation that he is the Messiah, Savior of all peoples. We who daily follow the light, the Holy Spirit, shall be people of eternal life. “Then you shall be radiant at what you see.” ( from the first reading)

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 72. “Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.” A society that honestly honors the place that God deserves because he is God worships him. God has created us out of an intense love for us because his divine nature is love. The very least we ought to do is to love him as the divine giver of love and recognize him as who he truly is, the infinite divinity. The way to let God be God in our lives is to worship him in our prayers daily. If we don’t do that, then he is no longer genuinely present to our hearts and minds. We end treating him as a non-existent entity in our lives. Practically speaking, by not giving God the place he deserves in our daily routine, we live as atheists. Let us worship him daily

FAMC18. 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28. God was always active and involved in the lives of his Chosen People, the Israelites. He guided them through the prophets he personally appointed and raised up. In order to understand this first reading please read the first chapter of the book of Samuel. God answers the prayer of Hannah by allowing her to bear a son, Samuel. Through Samuel, God was to lead King David and his People to be a great nation. In the third reading God gives Mary a son Jesus to lead the peoples of all times to heaven.

Luke 2:41-52. Mary and Joseph are referred to as Jesus’ parents because Joseph is Jesus’ father by adoption. Joseph is, in effect, Jesus’ earthly father. God is still Jesus’s heavenly father but in part exercises his fatherly care through Joseph while Joseph is still alive. I believe this incident of the Holy Family in Jerusalem has been given in the Scriptures to further confirm that Jesus was both thoroughly human as well as thoroughly divine. Jesus’ divinity had to carefully keep enough of a distance from his humanity to allow his humanity to be fully human because his divinity is so incredibly powerful that his humanity would have been overwhelmed, if his divinity became too involved with his humanity. Around the age of twelve a Hebrew boy can celebrate his ceremonial age of becoming a man, his bar-mitzvah, fully responsible to follow the Law. Jesus in his humanness had achieved a certain level of maturity by the age of twelve that he was able to sit “in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions,” to the extent that “all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.” However, at the age of twelve he had not yet gained the mindfulness to think of asking his parents for the permission to remain in Jerusalem. In no way did Jesus mean to reject obedience to his parents but was simply being thoughtless in his humanity. He was to grow yet further in his maturation process. This passage continues on saying, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” This gospel finishes by saying, “And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” In his divinity he was all-knowing and so could never learn more but in his humanity he needed to and did learn more and more as he grew older and older.

1 John 3:1-2, 21-24. “Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.” In our liturgy at the beginning of the ‘Our Father’ prayer it says, “We dare to say, Our Father.” How can we be so bold to call the Almighty Creator, Our Father’? Jesus, his son, make it clear that his Father wants to be a loving, caring Father, but also a demanding Father to us. His demand is that “we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them.” By being obedient to his will, which means the same as keeping his commandments, we become his children and he, our Father. We are living in him and he; in us; he is our home and we are his home. In other words, we are at home with the Lord daily, sharing endless fellowship with the Lord, much in the same way we feel at home with our families, friends and fellow workers. The Holy Spirit enables us to be his obedient children, who grow in holiness daily, developing more and more in his likeness as his children, even while we live in a world that rejects God as our Father.

“We do not know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” I believe that means that, as God took our humanity through Mary, when we go to live as God’s children in heaven, he will share with us, in some way or another that is not known to us now, some of his divinity.