Baptism of the Lord
January 11, 2026
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7 | Acts 10:34-38 | Matthew 3:13-17
Liturgically speaking, the Christmas season ends with the Epiphany, and the New Year’s Ordinary time starts with this feast of Baptism of Our Lord, since today is also the Ordinary Time’s first Sunday. But in a sense — I think — this day can be seen as both the end of Christmas and the beginning of the Ordinary season, if we understand “ordinary” as “normative.”
Today marks the inauguration of Jesus’ mission in the world, and his historical birth into the world as well as his manifestation to the world are steps to bring him to this point. And our duty, as Christians, is to “get down to business” in following his steps, to take on the mission he has entrusted to us.
Mission is what our Christian life is about, not only as individuals, but as the Church herself, for “it is not that the Church has a mission, but rather it is Mission that has a Church.”
Jesus’ mission is well described in the first reading from Isaiah, “as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness” — and from the second reading from Acts, “doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.” However, Jesus started all that by submitting himself to be baptized by John at the river Jordan, and so identified himself with all other people in their situation of life.
In Jesus’ time, there were various “spiritualties” among the Jewish people, as practiced by different groups like the Essenes, the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Zealots, but Jesuit Father Aloysius Pieris, the Sri Lankan theologian, has argued that Jesus chose to get baptized by John the Baptizer because he found John’s prophetic asceticism to be the most liberating. This baptism did not stand alone, but would be completed by another baptism that Jesus would later go through in the cross (cf. Luke 12:50). Father Pieris went on to insist that “the Church in Asia, in order to be of Asia, must undergo a double baptism in the Jordan of Asian religions and the Calvary of Asian poverties.”
What Father Pieris said for the Church in Asia is also true for the Church everywhere nowadays. We now all live in a globalized world, and, almost everywhere, one can encounter right in his/her neighborhood people of other faith traditions. We have to engage with them in dialogue, especially with Dialogue of Life and Dialogue of Action (working together for the common good, for peace and justice).
Also, people everywhere still endure many forms of poverties — socially, psychologically, spiritually, and physically. Pope Francis wanted the Church to be “a poor Church for poor people” and “a field hospital after battle to care for the wounded”; and only “wounded healers,” to use the term of Dutch priest and writer Father Henri Nouwen, can be truly effective healers.
Maryknoll Father Lo Xuan Dam, originally from Vietnam, was ordained in 2000. He serves migrant workers in Japan, most of whom come from Vietnam, the Philippines and Myanmar.
To read other Scripture reflections published by the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, click here.
Featured image: A photo shows the Jordan River, where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. (Bill Rice via Wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA 4.0).
