God lifts us up, so we should dare to fall – Matt 5:1-12a (Celebration of St. Francis de Sales)

Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A, parish celebration of St. Francis de Sales; Holy Infant parish.

When I was teaching confirmation class, this passage we just heard from Matthew, the beatitudes, was in our textbook. But, rather confusingly, it was in the section on Christian morality, on a right hand page, right next to the Ten Commandments on the left. I, at least, was confused by this, because the beatitudes aren’t primarily about what we’re meant to do at all. We have beautiful Christian teaching about what we are to do and not do; the Ten Commandments, inherited from our Jewish roots, work great as a to-do list (along with a not-to-do-list). I could tell the kids, make sure you honor father and mother this week, careful of that coveting. But the beatitudes? How could I tell them, go out and be poor this week, or go mourn?

Jesus enlightens the darkness – Matt 4:12-23, Isa 8:23-9:3

Ordinary Time, Year A, Wk 3; Holy Infant parish.

“When Jesus heard that John had been arrested…”  That’s how Jesus’ earthly ministry starts in Matthew. Jesus’ earthly ministry starts with tragedy, the arrest of John the Baptist. Jesus gets baptized by John, then he goes through his forty days in the desert (our lectionary moves that reading out of sequence, so we read it at the start of Lent), then he waits an unknown amount of time, until this moment, “John had been arrested.” Matthew doesn’t tell us how Jesus felt. Was his reaction something like frustration? – John was meant to be preparing his way, and he wasn’t done yet (we’ll see throughout the gospel how unprepared his way is!), but now he’s gone and got himself arrested so Jesus will just have to start ministry anyway. Maybe it’s fear? – if they arrested John, what will they do to him? Maybe there’s some grief, pre-emptive grief knowing what’ll likely come next for John, with all the weird mix of sadness and anger that entails.

Jesus baptizes us – John 1:29-34, Isa 49:3, 5-6

Second Sunday of OT, Year A; Holy Infant Parish.

Normally, the Church celebrates the feast of the Baptism of Christ on the Sunday after Epiphany. This year is strange, in that with Christmas being on a Sunday, the Baptism of Christ got moved to last Monday (when the local Church here was celebrating the feast of ‘not dying on icy roads’) and this is the first Sunday of Ordinary Time, which (confusingly) is the Sunday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time (which started with a half week last Tuesday). Confused yet?  All of those arcane calendrical calculations aside, in a coincidence, or probably act of Providence, this week we’re assigned a reading which is about the Baptism of Christ, albeit in a rather different sense than the Feast we observed on Monday. That feast is about the Baptism of Christ, as in, the time when Christ got baptized. This reading from John is about the Baptism of Christ, in the sense of the Baptism with which Christ baptizes. This reading is the kernel of the gospel, that God acts in Christ for us. In this case, the promise that Jesus will baptize us.