Last week we heard how John positioned the baptism of Jesus in the context of the prophetic role of John the Baptist. And in that account the first disciples of Jesus were previously disciples of John the Baptist – no mention of them being fishermen picked up along the beach. Matthew goes with the fisherman […]
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Read More »
Today we hear a very different account of the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, from John’s gospel (John 1:29-34). John still references Jesus baptism but he structures his account very differently (as is the case with pretty much everything in his gospel). Here there is no interaction between Jesus and the Father, the story is presented
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Read More »
Baptisms are all about beginning. In the Catholic tradition baptism became associated with babies – so a beginning of life in many senses. That was not always so. The earliest accounts of church life are completely focused on adults, and baptism had nothing to do with the start of human life, as in a baby,
The Baptism of the Lord Read More »
Today, the Feast of the Epiphany, marks the end of our Christmas season, the end of the beginning, as it were. The key to this ending is the message that the birth of Christ, the decisive entry of God into our world, into our human state, was not just a deeply human story of a
The Epiphany of the Lord Read More »