COLLECT SERIES.
SOLEMNITY OF BAPTISM OF THE LOR YEAR B
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The Mass: Collect Series Icon. |
COLLECT
The Collect for the Solemnity of Baptism of the
Lord Year B reads as follows:
Almighty ever-living God,
who, when Christ had been baptized in the River
Jordan
and as the Holy Spirit descended upon him,
solemnly declared him Your beloved Son,
grant that your children by adoption,
reborn of water and the Holy Spirit,
may always be well pleasing to you.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
who lives and reigns with You in the
unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
In making this prayer tangible, the
following reflection questions emerged:
What place does my Baptism have in my
faith journey?
How do I act as a child of God in my
life?
What does being reborn of water and
the Holy Spirit mean to me?
How will be pleasing to God during
2021- what changes do I need to make and what changes do I commit to on this
Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord?
How will I explore and nurture my
relationship with the Holy Spirit during 2021?
GOSPEL REFLECTION
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The Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. |
Mark describes Jesus simple as a man
coming from Nazareth in Galilee, a place mentioned nowhere in the Old
Testament. This event at the river is for Mark more significant.
It allows us, as the readers of Mark, in our first meeting with Jesus to
see Him as the Messiah standing with His people and to know from the outset how
God himself sees Jesus, as His own loved Son.
In Mark’s Gospel, the split heaven, the
dove and the voice after the baptism are more important than the baptism itself.
The experience of these, in Mark’s Gospel, is for Jesus only, and for us
the readers to know.
The heavens or sky split open is God
revealing himself a new awareness of God breaking into the human consciousness
of Jesus and through Him into the world. The dove expresses the love, the
peace and the Spirit of God which surround Jesus.
The voice from the heavens describes
Jesus as the faithful servant of the prophecy of Isaiah (Is 42:1), but says
much more. It identifies Jesus as the Son of God, having an intimacy with
God which can compare only with the special intimacy of life between parent and
child.
We may wonder why would Jesus want to
be baptised by John? Jesus never asked forgiveness for a sin of His own,
since Jesus is also God and is sinless. His baptism by John could only
have been a true expression of His deep longing to be totally centred on God.
It was also a way of acknowledging John’s work and showing human
solidarity with all of us. Jesus was not just giving good example to to others
when he asked for John’s baptism of conversion. His action could only
have come from genuine interior feelings.
As I stated in the previous post
regarding the preaching of John (1:2-8) St Mark fixes our gaze on John the
Baptist because he:
1. symbolized a way into the future by a
baptism of conversion.
2. wishes to show us that his baptism in
water symbolized dramatically a personal
readiness of heart for a baptism with
divine Spirit to be given by Jesus, the more
powerful one coming after
him.
3. wants us to realize that God
centredness cannot be realized by human effort
alone, but we prepare ourselves
for it as we wait for it to come as a gift from God.
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