OMELIE / Omelie EN

10 gen 2021

10/01/2021 – The Baptism of the Lord  - year B 

10/01/2021 – The Baptism of the Lord  - year B 

Reading 1 IS 55,1-10 Psalm IS 12,2.4-6 Reading 2 1JN 5,1-9 Gospel MK 1,7-11

Today we stop next to John the Baptist to listen to his testimony and to be helped contemplate Jesus. First of all, he clarifies to everyone his indignity: “I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals”. Then he compares himself to Jesus: “I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the holy Spirit”. The work of the precursor is only external, preparatory. He uses water in order to clean: with his service he can only purify the life of those who humbly declare themselves sinners and want to be reconciled with God. But that is not all and it is not enough to be purified and reconciled! Much more is what Jesus will accomplish: He will fill the life of the purified man with the novelty of the Holy Spirit: “He will baptize you with the holy Spirit”. Thanks to Him the man will be made holy, will become carrier of the divine love, and they will be made divine.

Jesus too has entered the water and has been baptised by John. Did he need to be purified from sins too? Obviously not, but He wants to show His support to the sinners, and so He offers to take onto Himself the weight and the penance for their sins. He shows in this way His love to each one of us, a complete, perfect, unsolicited, unimaginable love. He does this because the Sacred Scriptures had stated that the Servant of God would have carried everyone’s sins: He is therefore fulfilling every justice, as He says John in the gospel according to Matthew, so He fulfills the will shown by God through the prophets. From the Jordan Jesus begins already to climb the Calvary. In fact, He comes out of the water loaded with our sins, and He is not ashamed to carry them: He will call us friends and brothers.

This is the moment in which on earth, among sinful men, appears for the first time the fullness of the divine love, selfless love, love which loves to the point to take on itself the punishment for someone else’s sins. Who among us, if unfairly accused, would not justify themselves and try to avoid the punishment? Here instead Jesus offers Himself voluntarily to free us from every accusation taking responsibility for it. In Him appears the love, new, divine! This action of His, which could have been overlooked by men, is not overlooked by God: He cannot help but make sure that all world is aware of it. The whole world needs to know how true love is, and who is the one bringing it among us. And then behold, the Father sends visibly over Him the Holy Spirit, and with His voice clarifies the identity of that humble and quiet man, immersed in the water which purifies the sinners. The word of John was too weak a testimony, so now there they are the sign and the Voice coming from heaven!

You are my beloved Son! Jesus is the Son, the Son of God. With His own voice the Father shows His divinity. Since He is the Son of God, Jesus reveals God’s true face, the face of e Father. God begins to be seen on earth. Begins to be taken away the veil which prevents men from seeing the invisible. Jesus is the God made flesh, the God of love. The true love begins to be seen and enjoyed on earth. This is confirmed also by John, the apostle, in the second reading. Not only, John tells us even that whoever believe in Jesus are begotten by God. So the divinity is visible also on the face and in the life of whom believe in Jesus. And those who believe have in them the strength to win over the world with its damaging and misleading thoughts. In order to help us Jesus has come “through water and blood”, with the baptism and the Eucharist. These are the main means that are given us to support ourselves, thanks to the Holy Spirit which has appeared above Jesus and dwells in Him.

Isaiah then has told us that God’s thoughts, and so His way to consider men with their philosophies, are different from those entertained by men themselves. And he insists on it by saying that then our ways of acting need to be changed, that they need to match God’s thoughts. Thanks to Jesus we will be able to see them and to go beyond our plans in order to take on the Father’s, and so enjoy full harmony between physical living and the desires that make life joyful and serene.