Go Forward
“Life can move from sheltered intimacy into open and perhaps threatening spaces. Not just at our birth, but perhaps often in life. Sometimes we try to draw back, thinking the earlier security is better. But, hopefully, we also know that to go forward and outwards is to be open to the wider world of new life, new people, where we can grow and fulfil the promise within us.
Much of the Christian world celebrates the Baptism of the Lord this Sunday. So soon after the intimacy of the new-born Child and its Mother at Christmas! Yet the Feast of Epiphany, 6 January, has been about light shining forth into all nations. And now the adult Jesus is baptised at the Jordan; he is being sent out. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved’ (Matthew 3:17). ‘He is my chosen one in whom my soul delights … I have made you a covenant of the people, and light to the nations’ (Isaiah 42:1, 6).
Chosen, delighted in, sent forth: this is the truth and meaning in each of our lives. Lord, that I may know this.”
~Irish Jesuits
Much of the Christian world celebrates the Baptism of the Lord this Sunday. So soon after the intimacy of the new-born Child and its Mother at Christmas! Yet the Feast of Epiphany, 6 January, has been about light shining forth into all nations. And now the adult Jesus is baptised at the Jordan; he is being sent out. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved’ (Matthew 3:17). ‘He is my chosen one in whom my soul delights … I have made you a covenant of the people, and light to the nations’ (Isaiah 42:1, 6).
Chosen, delighted in, sent forth: this is the truth and meaning in each of our lives. Lord, that I may know this.”
~Irish Jesuits
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