Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 12, 2025: The grace of God has appeared, saving all...

The grace of God has appeared, saving all…
Do we trust in God’s promises? 

    God’s promise of salvation is ongoing and personal. The prophet Isaiah writes to a community in exile hoping for release of imminent relief from their bondage: speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her service is at an end; her guilt is expiated. The people of Israel can look forward with hope so long as they have confidence and faith in God and in God’s promise. In fact, God’s action in our world surpasses all we might hope for, from the beginning of time. Psalm 104 reminds us to bless the Lord for God’s care of all of his creation: They look to you to give them food in due time; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. Both Isaiah and the psalmist celebrate God’s ongoing care and concern for creation, and God’s constant efforts to renew the face of the earth. 

    Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to humankind; his coming releases us from our bondage to sin. In Luke’s Gospel, all are baptized, Jesus along with the rest, but the presence of the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus in bodily form like a dove is a revelation of all that Jesus is. All Jesus has done and will do is pleasing to God the Father: You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased, the voice from heaven intones. Like John the Baptist, we are not worthy to loosen the thongs of Jesus’ sandals, and yet he will sacrifice himself on our behalf. The grace of God has appeared, Paul tells Titus, saving all! God, whom we do not and cannot see, has been made manifest, revealed in the Incarnation. Our baptism is our entry into his passion, death and resurrection; we participate that we might be transformed, undergoing the bath of rebirth, that Christ might cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.

    If Isaiah’s prophecy brought comfort to a people who were troubled and living in fear, giving them confidence to persevere, the coming of Jesus should do the same for us. In baptism, we are transformed, that we might conform our lives to his. Grace saves us, training us to live as we ought. We are saved, if only we have faith in him and in the fulfillment of God’s promise to humankind in the person of Jesus Christ.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
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