Getting Ready to Pray                     

Fortunately or unfortunately there is much conversion-work for Jesus to do in our lives and much listening to the calls of grace. We can pray for this open-eared, openhearted way of relating with the calling God.

We have been baptized into several identities within that of Christ. These coming weeks we will pray with such themes. We can reflect upon our having been washed, incorporated into his body the Church, but even more, we can pray for the openness to hear our names, hear our gifts and accept our missions.

Some Thoughts 

We hear of a mysterious servant in today’s First Reading. Many prophets as well as Israel itself saw themselves as servants of the Lord. This is the first of the four “Servant Songs” in Isaiah and this particular person has been formed, called and charged with very specific missions.

This servant is to bring justice to the nations, but not damage anything or anybody who is weak or small. We Christians apply such texts to Jesus as the Messiah and he, himself, announces through his reading of this particular section, that he is the fulfillment of this prediction.

Whoever this servant is to be, his life was formed for labors which will be demanding and eventually lead him to conflict, contradiction and sufferings. The victory to which he is called in this reading will be over hearts and attitudes and so the battle for justice will be lengthy.

Jesus enters the waters of the Jewish tradition recalling the Jews escaping slavery through the waters of freedom. Jesus comes up out of the water fully a Jew and fully alive to his being called to live faithfully all that he has “listened to.” In a real sense this is Matthew’s public Epiphany.

Jesus is manifested publicly and his mission is to continue God’s covenantal relationship of love with the Jews and all “the coastlands who will be waiting for his teaching.”

We who have been immersed in Christ by being baptized are likewise ordained to listen to what God also says about us. If we are in Christ, then we belong to the “beloved-ness” with which God embraced the human Jesus.

We are not divine, but divinely blest into a new identity which has a hook. If we believe who Jesus is and if we believe we are incorporated in him, then our coming out of the waters of freedom is the beginning of our listening to who he says we are.

The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Psalm 29