OMELIE / Omelie EN

07 gen 2024

07/01/2023 – The Baptism of the Lord - year B

07/01/2023 – The Baptism of the Lord - year B

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

Today it is Isaiah's turn to introduce us to the feast of the Baptism of the Lord with a joyful invitation. The invitation comes from God Himself, who sees the hunger and thirst of our heart, and offers Himself to us to satiate us and quench our thirst, to engulf us then in His Love, a selfless and generous love. To be able to run towards Him, a conversion of our desires and our thoughts is necessary. Ours are different from God’s, this is why we experience suffering and death. By welcoming His Word, we will live and will be able to enjoy the new and true life, guaranteed, as are guaranteed the crops after the rain and the bread after the crops have been harvested.

Isaiah’s words were being repeated already for a few centuries, when John, near the river Jordan, was inviting everyone to finally make the change of desires and thoughts, because was finally present the one who, after having lifted away on His shoulders the sin of the world, offers for free the water and the bread of life.

John is inviting us to look at Him, to join Him, He who, in order to show us His true love, is firmly taking a place among the sinners. He is not afraid to come into contact with them, on the contrary, He immerses Himself in the same water which washes away their sins. That water is not going to make Him unclean, instead He, with His holiness, will purify the water and those who have washed themselves in it. He becomes «sinner», without committing any sin, without putting distance between Himself and the Father, who introduces Him as His «beloved» through His strong and mysterious voice coming from above, from the open heavens. Even a dove comes down upon Him, and it perches itself on Him to stay, a Dove in which everyone can recognise the figure of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the God who wants to reach all men with His love. It is Noah’s dove, which has found the solid ground where to sit, the place to live in forever without having to go back to the Arc.

What can be seen and what can be heard is all exceptional, because makes us think of God’s promises perpetuated by the prophets. We have reached the fulfillment, at the end of the time for waiting.

John wishes now only to disappear, not feeling worth even to bend down and doing a slave’s job for the one who comes after him and is “greater” than him. John’s strength is not a physical strength, nor a strength coming from weapons, but the strength of the one who attracts everyone to bring them safely to God. Jesus is “greater” because He will attract everyone. Nobody, not even him, John, is good enough to take His place as the groom to love forever the bride, God’s people, so to give her God’s strong and steadfast love. We too go to Him, because by adhering to Him we will be generated by God, we will have in us the same love as the Father’s.

The apostle John, in His letter, insists on this fact. We, who believe that Jesus is the Christ, so the man anointed by God to make available for us His divinity, are generated by God. To be generated by God means to be Children of God, his relatives and his close collaborators. This is why, John continues, those who love the children of God truly loves God too.

The apostle, before we even ask, answers our question: how do we love God and His children? “The love of God is this, that we obey his commandments”, and in this way we can “conquer the world”, the world which is around us and the one which is hidden inside us to ruin our life. We conquer it by believing in the Son of God, the Son who has immersed Himself in the water spoilt by the sinners, and to whom the Spirit coming down upon Him has given testimony.

Giving our adhesion to Jesus is the recipe always valid to solve our main problems: in this way we will truly transform our desires and our thoughts, we will make changes to them to model them on the Father’s. Truly from a place of sin, let us repeat our yes to every Word of His. We will be too joy for God, a place where He can find His enjoyment!