Scripture Reflection - January 11, 2026

The Baptism of the Lord

First Reading: Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7

Psalm: 29:1-2, 3-4, 3, 9-10

Second Reading: Acts 10:34-38

Gospel: Matthew 3:13-17

You are my Beloved Child, in whom I am delighted!  This is God’s message to all of us today, baptized into Christ, who himself was baptized by John. To be clear, the Christ into whom we are baptized is infinitely more than the earthly Jesus, who is indeed our Savior. Jesus went to the Jordan River where John was baptizing and asked to be included in John’s baptism. That is, he asked to be included as one of us, which is what he was born to be. John resisted; Jesus insisted. The event of baptism happened to Jesus; he was the recipient. As he emerged from the waters, the heavens opened, and he received his divine commissioning as the anointed Servant of God, fulfilling the role of the Servant in the first reading.

The event of baptism happened to each of us as well, and we received the same message Jesus did: You are my Beloved Child, in whom I am delighted!  Imagine what we could be, what we could accomplish for the world’s healing if we truly believed how beloved we are, how much delight God takes in beholding us.

We are concluding our celebration of the Christmas Season and entering Ordinary Time. Then, Lent will be upon us before we know it. Beatrice Bruteau suggests that the baptism of Jesus gestures towards Holy Thursday, with a vision of what she calls the Two Showings.[1] The first Showing is the Footwashing, in which Jesus inverts and dissolves the Master-Servant relationship. When Peter didn’t want Jesus to wash his feet, perhaps it was because he “got” the implications of Jesus’ actions and was afraid: The old order of domination was being dissolved. Nothing would ever be the same again. “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” Bruteau reflects on it like this: “Do you see how it is? That a friend’s life lives inside you? And you live inside your friend? It’s that kind of love.”

The second Showing is the Bread and the Cup. Bread: “What was my body will be your body. Do you see? My life is given to nourish your life, to make you live more fully.” Wine: “It is a single cup; share it among you. It is common life among us all…. lay down your lives for each other, dwell in one another.”

An exalted vision, indeed, but within reach in the great “already but not yet” of our baptism. The earthly life of Jesus shows us what it means to be baptized into the life of Christ, the infinite and cosmic Second Person of the Trinity. There is a way of being human that leads us into the Divine Life, a real participation in the Messianic vision of the New Creation, and we are inaugurated into it in our own Baptism.

Sr. Kathleen McManus, OP

[1] Beatrice Bruteau, The Holy Thursday Revolution (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2005).