OMELIE / Omelie FR

12 gen 2025

12/01/2025 - Baptême du Seigneur - Année C

12/01/202 - Baptême du Seigneur - Année C

Première L. Is 40,1-5.9-11 du Psaume 103 Deuxième L. Tite 2,11-14 ; 3,4-7 Évangile Luc 3,15-16.21-22

Isaiah announces the end of slavery for the people: these are news which need to be cried out loud from the highest places: God Himself is coming, He is coming with the prize, and He comes like a shepherd who is taking care of the flock.

These are the words of consolation which the Jewish people really needed, in every phase of history. These are the words we need today.

How many people are bound, compelled by different masters to live differently from how they would like to! Who are these very demanding masters that do not allow to rest, take a break or any freedom? The masters who want to be in charge are the trends, the ideologies, the shallow discussions served by conversations on TV, the indifferent, curious, superficial eyes of neighbours, work colleagues…and, even worse, our very own desires fed with subtle selfishness.

How much sadness and how much suffering under these rulers, in this servitude freely chosen!

“Cry out at the top of your voice, herald of good news”! Unfortunately, we tend to lower our voice, even to stay silent regarding the good news that our Lord Jesus has entered our life, He who has freed us from the weight of our sins, who has allowed us to open our eyes to see a path of peace and communion with everyone. “Cry out at the top of your voice”, Isaiah is telling us. This is what John the Baptist has done.

He truthfully declares he is only someone who is preparing the coming of the one who is awaited by everyone’s heart: Jesus is the one who can access our most inner places to leave the Holy Spirit, so a fire of joy and love can be kindled in us.

There He is, Jesus Himself is coming. He too listens to John and receives the Baptism. We see so much humility in Him lowering Himself in the water, where, before Him, men full of sin had been, full of arrogance, violence, sexual deviance, thefts and murders, swearing and heresies, magic and cons.

« What are you doing, Jesus, in that water? You are not spoilt by our arrogance and our selfishness, you have never committed what we have, you do not need to be washed. What are you doing under John’s hands? Why are you entering the water we have made all dirty?»

Jesus is in silence: a sea of wickedness is weighing on Him, of suffering, of meanness, of suicides, of evil, of injustices, of thefts and cons, of lies and gossip, of adulteries and sensuality, of injustices and false good deeds which are masking vainglory and pride. He does not answer us: He begins carrying a very big cross, the one which each one of us should carry.

Instead, the Father is answering us, from high up in the heavens, from His silence. He is answering us, first of all, by opening the sky. This was something the whole people was asking for, with the supplication: «O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!». He then sends down on Him the dove, the Holy Spirit. Like Noah’s dove, this dove shows where we can find the life God gives to the world: the life for men is Jesus, who has pleased the Father from the moment He has taken on Himself the sin every man commits and no man makes reparations for.

Jesus, by entering the water, is making such a great act of love, that the Father Himself is moved by it: in fact, with His act He is almost like saying: «Give me, Father, the penance these sins deserve, which are muddling the water of the river of faith and love; I will make reparations for them by offering myself to you».

The apostle Paul, writing to Titus, is reassuring us that truly «through Jesus Christ our savior» God has saved us, and He has not done so because we deserve it with our holy deeds, but only to grant the prayer that the Son is offering Him by giving Himself up.

So, this is the reason why the Father, who wants every man to be saved, recognises in Him the greatness and the fullness of His love, and so He declares: «You truly are my Son, you are similar to me in everything, your love is my love!».