You are My Son, the Beloved

The baptism by John in the river Jordan would not have been easy for the first Christians to understand. On the face of it, this undergoing of a ritual of repentance did not seem to make sense. It can only have been included in the gospel tradition because it really happened. However, the account we have in Mark’s gospel shows us that reflection upon this event led to an understanding of its great significance - as the defining inauguration of the mission of Jesus. It was the Father’s authorization of the public role he was about to assume, and a prefiguring of the climax to which his career would lead – the Paschal Mystery – which he was later to look forward to as ‘a baptism’ (Lk 12:50).

The destiny of each of us has its origin in the Father’s decision, before time began, to create us and to call us to a unique place in the divine plan of creation. Our response to God’s call is made as we take up the issues of our lives. Because he ‘has been put to the test in exactly the same way as we ourselves are, apart from sin’ (Heb 4:15), the Eternal Son’s life among us followed the same pattern as ours. His baptism by John was a decisive moment in his human life. Come to carry forward the designs of God among the chosen people, Jesus came and mingled with the enthusiastic crowd listening to John’s preaching. Submitting to John’s baptism was a moment of compassionate solidarity that he would have prayerfully shared with the Father. Suddenly, Mark’s account takes an unexpected turn - ‘the heavens are torn open’ and a Trinitarian drama unfolds as the presence of God’s Spirit is made manifest, and the incarnate Son receives a commission from the Eternal Father, indicating what is in store for him in the public mission he will undertake: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.

This commission echoes two Old Testament traditions. ‘You are my Son’ - the gospels make it clear that Jesus was sustained throughout his public life by his relationship with his Father. Though the phrase ‘son of God’ meant originally no more than an adoptive sonship (as, for example, in honour of Israel’s kings (e.g. Ps 2:7), when Mark’s gospel was written, applied to Jesus these words referred to the unique, strictly divine sonship that was one of the basic themes of the New Testament. ‘You are the Beloved; my favour rests on you’, echoes God’s words to the ‘Suffering Servant’ in Isaiah: ‘here is my servant; the chosen one in whom my soul delights’ (Is 42:1). This remarkable ‘Servant’ tradition takes us to the very threshold of the Christian Gospel. It foretells - in the time of the nation’s exile humiliation - a future triumph of God, through one will ‘astonish the nations’ as he embodies the nation’s true destiny, ‘a man of sorrows’, ‘led like a lamb to the slaughter house’, bringing ‘healing’ to the people as he ‘bears the sorrows’ of all (cf. Is 52-53). The commission of the Father indicated, therefore, that the compassionate solidarity that led Jesus to undergo John’s baptism would be the pattern of the mission he was about to undertake. Today’s first reading from Isaiah (closely associated with the ‘Servant’ prophecies) celebrates the glorious future the Saviour will inaugurate: God’s banquet, a new exodus, an everlasting covenant, the triumph of God’s Word.

Opening their Treasures

Through the Incarnation, the generosity and mercy of God have finally appeared among us

- in the life of one who is the very expression of the Father’s greatness.  And so, from earliest times the Church’s Christmas celebration has made reference the Epiphany, or ‘Manifestation’ of the Lord – symbolised in the story of today’s gospel, but also realised in a special way in the Lord’s baptism, and in the ‘first sign’ he worked at the marriage in Cana. It comes as no surprise, when we hear it read, to find that today’s first reading from Isaiah has a very ancient association with this festival: ‘Arise, shine out Jerusalem.  The nations come to your light and kings to your brightness’. This passage – from the writings of the Isaian tradition from the period after the return from the exile – expresses a vision of Israel fulfilling its role as ‘a light to the nations’.  Sharing in the ‘glory’ (or incomparable greatness) of the Lord himself, the holy city will attract the wealth of the nations as the kings of the earth share in its rebuilding.

This Old Testament text and its parallels (see Ps 72:10) may have inspired the story recounted by Matthew in today’s gospel. It is possible that an unusual astronomical event may also have contributed to its inspiration, calling to mind the prophecy of Balaam, ‘a star is emerging from Jacob’ (Num 24:17).  As it stands, the story is filled with symbolic meaning. The Magi represent the nations of the earth finding the Saviour of the world – in contrast to the scribes of Israel, familiar with the scriptures but not recognising their fulfilment; the gifts of the Magi are symbolic of the world’s confession of faith in Christ – gold for royalty, frankincense for priesthood, myrrh for the one who is to die; notoriously ruthless Herod reminds us of earthly powers that obstruct the designs of God. We should note, especially, the significance of the words, ‘going in they saw the child with his mother, Mary’. While Luke’s narrative of Christ’s conception and birth has Mary as its central figure, Matthew’s account of the virgin birth is centred on Joseph. The words we have quoted, however, reflect the importance already given to Mary in the community that gave us Matthew’s gospel.

The second reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians continues the theme of ‘manifestation’, as it takes us into the depths of Paul’s vision of faith in Christ.  For Paul, of course, God’s dealings with the human family have come to a magnificent climax in what God has done for the world in Christ.  As we read in the opening lines of the letter to the Ephesians, Paul interprets Christ’s saving work as the revelation of a great ‘mystery’ - the real purpose God has had in mind since the beginning of creation: ‘He has let us know the mystery of his purpose, to bring everything together under Christ as head, everything in the heavens and everything on earth’. Through his ministry, Paul has seen the realisation of what is symbolised in the story of the Magi – the whole human race is called with old Israel, to share ‘the same inheritance’, to be ‘parts of the same body’, to share in ‘promise’ that the ‘gospel’ has brought to the world ‘in Christ Jesus’.