Reflection Case

You are my beloved...with you I am well pleased

I am grateful that my final Gospel reflection is on the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, a moment that roots Jesus in his identity as the beloved of God and launches him into his time for prayer and temptation in the desert and his public ministry. The depth of God's Word finds us relating with both Jesus and John. We are like John. John was not the Messiah, but was set apart by God to prepare the way for the Lord to come in his time and to preach forgiveness as the path to God. We too are called to prepare the way for the Lord here in Mill Valley in 2013. In our families, schools, offices, churches, and world we are called to be prophets of reconciliation and forgiveness in a broken world and to point people to the wholeness that is only found in relationship with the God who created us and loves us into life. As St. Francis reminds us and John models, we are called to preach the Gospel, when necessary use words. This should challenge us to live more authentic lives in our actions and should push us out of our safe or polite comfort zones to be willing to offer to those in our lives words of forgiveness, comfort, challenge, and a direct invitation to a relationship with God and participation to Mass.

We are like Jesus. We too should reflect that, what is spoken of Jesus by God is spoken to us: You are my beloved...with you I am well pleased! Each of us has experienced the world and our human life and relationships as broken. One of our primary spiritual tasks is to claim our true identity, not of a broken world and history, but of God's first love for us. Our identity is rooted in being created by God, being loved into being, wholly and perfectly by the only love that can be whole and perfect: God's love. The Christian life is to claim that identity daily and to share it with one another. Claiming our true identity cannot be done alone but requires a community, a faith-family, to walk together, to share the sign of that belovedness, the self-gift of the Eucharist, and to be strengthened by that spiritual food to go forth to proclaim our true identity to the world: we are not random or solely individual, we are the beloved daughters and sons of God.

Gospel Activity

-Do you know you and your family's baptism anniversary dates? (In some countries the date of baptism is celebrated as more significant than the day of birth each year) Look up each person's baptism date and make a point to make that day special by reminding and modeling that they are loved by God!