Contents: Volume 2

EPIPHANY of the LORD & BAPTISM of the LORD (C)

January 5, 2025 & January 12, 2025

1. -- Lanie LeBlanc OP - Epiphany
2. -- Dennis Keller - OP - Baptism of the Lord
3. -- Fr. John Boll, OP - Epiphany
4. --
5. --(Your reflection can be here!)

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Epiphany 2025

The readings today, as well as the title of the feast, Epiphany, give rise to many opportunities for reflection. Hopefully, the busyness of getting back to routines at the beginning of a new year, won’t get in the way! Let each of us carve out some time to give proper attention to our spiritual life and some solid direction. In 2025.

Our first reading from the book of Isaiah, uses the image of light in the darkness to revive worn out spirits. Maybe because I am older and more reflective than in my younger years, but I can not remember a time in my own history when so much seems so dark. Add to that of course, that the need for light/enlightenment seems more crucial! For us Christians, Jesus is the light. Our salvation, begun with Jesus’s birth, reminds us that God is indeed with us, THE Light of the world.

Our second reading tells us that this Salvation is offered not only to the “favorites”, but to us all. All means ALL. Yes, even “them”, whoever they are in our lives, including those in our families, neighborhoods, parishes, workplaces, or part of the world. How will we accept this fact, that “they” are offered this gift just as we are? What will we do to make our lives more inclusive as it is in God’s Master Plan?

The scriptural focus of the day is on the journey of the Magi. Children and even adults are often surprised that the word and meaning of magi is not very specific. It has meant wise men, kings, priests, astronomers, scholars, and pilgrims Following the leanings of knowledge of the time, it certainly meant those who were wise and seeking enlightenment. Their story shows that their journey was arduous, unknown, long, and perilous… then they met up with an obstacle to their belief (Herod). Our stories seem to be similar, with different details though, as we seek the One .and the Way.

As we become more open to the unexpected manifestation of Jesus in our lives, will we rejoice, offer the gifts we have, and trust that the change in the rest of our journey will demonstrate the Gift we have received?

Blessings,
Dr. Lanie LeBlanc OP
Southern Dominican Laity

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Baptism of the Lord
January 12, 2025 - Year C

Isaiah 42:1-4 & 6-7; Responsorial Psalm 29; Acts of Apostles 10:34-38;
Gospel Acclamation Mark 9:7; Luke 3:15-16 & 21-22

Last Sunday we celebrated the great solemnity of the Epiphany. We heard in the gospel about seekers of wisdom and hope. The Magi were learned persons from the East – Babylon or perhaps Persia. We think of them as men though there are no names attached to them in the gospels. Perhaps there were women with those wise seekers. The Magi are presented as genderless and nameless. There is not even a clear designation of the number of them. They were learned people who were searching for new leadership, a baby whose life would be a seismic switch in how the world lived. This baby was to born of the Jews. How that is known by these searchers is dependent on the history of the Hebrew nation. Their history and the faith it formed is different from pagans’ religion. The Hebrew nation’s history is filled with strange happenings, miraculous events. Their faith is based on historic events that brought freedom to the nation several times. These are not myths made up to explain strange events and nature’s energies. This visitation by these wise people is proof of a global application of change because of the birth of this child. The message is for all who search for truth, for fullness of living, and for hope. Those will have come to know and live a life of meaning and purpose.

This Sunday is also viewed as a second Epiphany by the Eastern and Orthodox Church. This Sunday we hear of the baptism of Jesus by his cousin, the Baptist. And there is also that voice from the heavens, and a manifestation in the form of a dove we know as the Holy Spirit. In the gospel this Sunday, the voice from the cloud identifies Jesus to himself as God’s son. “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” In Matthew we hear the same words. Mark’s gospel had those same words as well. The voice speaks to Jesus revealing to Jesus he is Son of God. He already experienced being the Son of Man. In all four gospels, there is a clear representation of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus.

This baptismal narrative marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. You may recall that immediately following this event Jesus goes into the desert to pray. It is said the Spirit leads him. It is the beginning of his ministry. After a lengthy period of fasting and prayer he is prepared to be tempted about his methods, about how he will carry out his ministry of healing, of preaching, and teaching about the Kingdom of God. His public ministry is a setting up of the Kingdom of God (Heaven) in creation. The reason of our liturgy of the Word until the Solemnity of Christ the King is how that Kingdom is established and expanded. That Kingdom is yet being established. That’s our work.

This is the second Epiphany. This time it is God the Father speaking and commissioning Jesus. He is baptized into his ministry. That applies to us as well. Our work in life beyond career and work in the secular world is to spread the Kingdom of God by our daily living. That is the Epiphany of God that is us by our baptism. In that baptism we are advised we are made priests, prophets, and kings/queens (well actually more like shepherds) caring for our world and all it contains. This is a great Sunday for us to renew our Baptismal vows.

This then leads to the third Sunday of Epiphany which is next Sunday. We read next week from John’s gospel. It is the wedding feast of Canna. Only John includes this in his gospel. This narrative has two purposes. In John’s gospel this event is the first day of the seven days of new creation. When we read his gospel beginning with chapter two and forward, if we’re attentive we understand John continues the narrative with a series of six more days. John portrays those seven days as a new creation. Interestingly enough the beginning of that new creation is compares the Kingdom of God to changing everything. What was ordinary – simple drinking water – becomes something wonderful. The steward at the wedding was amazed at the wonder of this wine. He did not know it had been water transformed into wine. The narrative is not only about a new creation rivaling the ordinariness of water. John as well wants to indicate that Jesus at the very beginning of his ministry has set in motion an unexpected, marvelous change in human life. Jesus unleashes a new creation. No longer violence, killing competition, hatred, despair in one’s condition based on what others think of us: this is new, this is revolution without bloodshed. The rest of this year we will hear – if we listen – we will hear what this new creation is about. We will hear over and over and over again that everyone has worth and dignity because God created them again in water and the blood(the seven days of John). No one can rob us of that dignity and worth God’s creation makes them. Anyone who finds in God a loving Father – an ABBA – need never again trust in humankind’s or society’s evaluation of dignity and worth. Racism, wealth, national origin, faith tradition, education, language, career – none of that can take steal God’s love for me --- and each and every you. We’ve only to understand that and behave as though we understand that. That is the Kingdom of God realized.

Dennis Keller - OP - Dennis @PreacherExchange.com 

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Year C: Epiphany

“Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.”
[Matthew 2.11]

Opening your treasures is a dangerous thing to do. Sharing them creates bonds of love that bind us tighter even then we know.

Let me read to you what I think is the most important principle in human relationships. It is entitled, somewhat drily, Annotation 22 of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. And, in a modern free translation, it reads like this:…

“Always assume that anyone you meet means well and that everything they say is well intended. Therefore whatever they say or do, put on it the best possible construction compatible with the facts.”

And my reason for believing that is my experience of having met the greatest leader I have personally known. She is now in heaven, so I can say that her name is Sheila Walsh. And, when I knew her, she was the chief executive of a hospital in Guyana. After four decades of leading huge hospitals in the United States, she was giving her final years to leading our tiny little mission hospital in South America.

And do you know the way that, just sometimes, when you first meet someone with a huge reputation, you half expect to be disappointed, but then at the moment of meeting, you just know why they are who they are. I will always remember my first moment of seeing the great golfer Severiano Ballesteros, on the 8th tee at Portmarnock. He walked onto the tee, a head taller and a shoulder broader than any other player, and smacked his drive 340 yards straight down the middle of the fairway. And I knew I had just seen why he was the best golfer in the world.

Sheila was just the same. I noticed that, in the first ten minutes of our meeting, she had found what was best in me and getting me to talk about it. I was awestruck.

Within weeks of her coming, our hospital was a different place. She was able to make the deaf hear and the dumb speak. People who had been angry and resentful ceased to be; people who had never listened to anyone in their working lives were willing to understand how and why they were being asked to work differently. People who had never brought their minds to work were now enthused and keen to propose improvements.

Fascinated, I often asked her to tell me her secret of leadership, more, I confess, out of a desire to possess what she had, rather than to serve as she did. And she would not tell me, or so I thought. It made me just resentful, right up until I asked her, entirely by accident, the right question. And the right question to ask, I have discovered, of any Christian is, ‘how do you pray’, where do you find God?

She said that every morning, very early, she scrubbed the floor of the kitchen. She admitted that she allowed her community to think that this was out of devotion to the well-being of the community. But, actually, it was her best time for prayer. She always found it easier to pray when she was doing something physical. And as she scrubbed the floor, she thought almost always not about the problems with the structures or the issues in the hospital, but about the people. Most especially, about the people with whom she had had difficulty the previous day. And she prayed for the insight to see them as the Lord sees them. And she prayed for the insight to see whatever was good and likeable about them. And once she felt she had found it, she tried to focus her mind and heart as hard as possible on just that in the hope that this would be the only thing that she would see about them. And so, when it worked, (and she admitted that he did not always work for her) she found it was possible to get the really best out of people and show it to themselves and show it to their colleagues.

Ever since, I’ve done my level best to do the same. I am not yet scrubbing floors, I have yet to achieve that level of sanctity, but I do ask people in confession who come to me wondering how it is possible to forgive seventy times seven to pray her way and to attempt to see people the way that the Lord sees them. As a great mystic once said, the Lord does not see us the way we are, nor the way we have been, or even the way we would like to be, he sees us as the people who, with his grace, we can become.

As Christians we hope to do likewise. We are not naïve about how people are, but we always try to see them as God sees them and treat them according to how we want them to be. Not just because that’s what works, but because it is what is right. It is what Jesus did.

Let us stand and profess our faith in God’s Presence, even in our worst enemies.

Paul O'Reilly SJ <poreillysj@jesuit.org.uk>

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Volume 2 is for you. Your thoughts, reflections, and insights on the next Sundays readings can influence the preaching you hear. Send them to preacherexchange@att.net. Deadline is Wednesday Noon. Include your Name, and Email Address.
-- Fr. John

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