Daily Gospel Reflection
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January 11, 2026
Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan
to be baptized by him.
John tried to prevent him, saying,
“I need to be baptized by you,
and yet you are coming to me?”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us
to fulfill all righteousness.”
Then he allowed him.
After Jesus was baptized,
he came up from the water and behold,
the heavens were opened for him,
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and coming upon him.
And a voice came from the heavens, saying,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Today’s gospel strikes me as a moment of profound humility. Jesus is sinless, yet he steps into the river to be cleansed of sin. One wonders: why would a sinless God undergo baptism? Christ is remarkable because he fully immerses himself in the human experience. Christ takes on human flesh and form. He is a carpenter, born into a human family amongst ordinary people. When Christ humbles himself to receive baptism, he is standing in solidarity with the human experience. What can we learn from this passage?
Last summer, I lived in New York City. At first, I was shocked by the number of homeless people; there was a staggering and tragic amount of suffering. It’s a devastating reality, but through the hustle and bustle, it can be easy to accept suffering as the city norm.
One day, a homeless mother was sitting with her infant. Her image stuck with me, and I began to bring her diapers and food. She was so grateful, and her reaction fueled me to start noticing homeless people more intimately, bringing them leftovers or coffee from the office. It was one mother who sparked a change in my disposition.
When suffering is everywhere, it’s tempting to treat it as background noise outside our responsibility. In a world of billions of people and constant busyness, we grow desensitized to pain around us. But today’s reading represents Christ’s humility and solidarity with mankind. It inspires us to accompany the human family wherever we may find it.
We are called to extend humility and authentic attention to those perhaps otherwise ignored—the student eating alone or the neighbor we never see. Let us remember to walk the way of Christ, and develop a posture of accompaniment, seeing the whole human family as our own.
Prayer
Spirit of God, give us grace to recognize the ways you live in our midst. Trusting that we are your beloved, may we have the courage to work for righteousness and truth. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day
Today, the Church celebrates the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan River, an event that points to the significance of the Sacrament of Baptism for all believers.
In an ancient sermon, St. Maximus of Turin wrote about this feast's connection to the Christmas season:
"Reason demands that this feast of the Lord’s baptism,
which I think could be called the feast of his birthday,
should follow soon after the Lord’s birthday,
during the same season, even though many years intervened between the two events.
At Christmas he was born a man; today he is reborn sacramentally.
Then he was born from the Virgin; today he is born in mystery.
When he was born a man, his mother Mary held him close to her heart;
when he is born in mystery, God the Father embraces him with his voice when he says:
This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased: listen to him.
The mother caresses the tender baby on her lap;
the Father serves his Son by his loving testimony.
The mother holds the child for the Magi to adore;
the Father reveals that his Son is to be worshipped by all the nations."
In this event of Christ's Baptism, as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, God appears in a trinitarian form: Jesus the Son, the Spirit as a dove descending from heaven, and the Father as a voice from the clouds. The Baptism is one of the theophanies described in the Gospels, meaning events where Jesus’ divinity is fully revealed.
As the second person of the Trinity, Jesus did not need Baptism, but he consented to be baptized by John as a sign of the depth to which he joins our humanity. John’s Baptism was intended for sinners as a sign of repentance. Jesus was without sin, of course, but joins us in Baptism, just as he took on the consequences of sin in his death, in order to bring us new life.
The same Maximus writes:
Christ is baptized, not to be made holy by the water,
but to make the water holy, and by his cleansing to purify the waters which he touched.
For the consecration of Christ involves a more significant consecration of the water.
For when the Saviour is washed, all water for our baptism is made clean,
purified at its source for the dispensing of baptismal grace to the people of future ages. Christ is the first to be baptized, then, so that Christians will follow after him with confidence.
In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ Baptism forms a bookend of sorts to his public life—his work begins and ends with Baptism. His Baptism by John marks the beginning of his ministry. After his resurrection, Jesus commissions the apostles to “Go and make disciples of all nations, Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
The scriptural account of Christ's Baptism has beautiful connections to powerful stories of God's action in the Old Testament. In the creation account (Gen 1:2), God’s Spirit is described as a wind hovering over the water; that same Spirit is shown over the waters of the Jordan here to show that in Baptism we are made a new creation in Christ. Christ, as the Second Adam, has opened up a truly new form of life with God, and in Christian Baptism, we die with Christ and rise with him to this new life of Resurrection (2 Tim 2:11, Romans 6:3-5, Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume II, p. 274).
The word “baptize” comes from the Greek word that means to “plunge” or “immerse.” In Baptism, the faithful are immersed and plunged into Christ’s death; they emerge from the water with Christ as a new creation through his resurrection. The water becomes a way to new life, much like the Israelites passed through the Red Sea in their liberation from captivity in Egypt. Ancient homilists often compared Christ's Baptism to the column of fire going before the Israelites in their exodus from Egypt. In the same way, the light of the world plunged into the waters of the Jordan to pave the way for all the baptized.
The tapestry pictured here in today's post shows John baptizing Jesus—it hangs in the chapel of the Coleman Morse Building on Notre Dame’s campus, which houses Campus Ministry.
On this feast of the Baptism of the Lord, let us give thanks for our Baptism by which we are made God’s children!