Luke 3:15-17, 21-22    Signposts

John the Baptist must have been a very dynamic and inspiring preacher.  He probably seemed a bit quirky, roaming around in the wilderness, calling people to change their ways.  The crowds speculated ‘in their hearts’ if John was the one they had been waiting for, but he used all of this attention and popularity for one purpose only: to point people to Jesus.  There are many people in our own lives who have pointed us towards Jesus, perhaps by an invitation to an event or sharing with us a new insight at just the right time: teachers, grandparents, religious inspirational speakers, friends …  In them we see something special that makes us wonder so that our hearts are moved to seek a little further.  They are the John the Baptist in our lives, signposts along the way.

Luke tells us little about Jesus’ actual baptism except that he is baptised alongside ‘all the people’.  The account is cantered on a powerful experience of the Spirit that occurs while Jesus is at prayer, and it marks the starting point of his ministry.  The experience of being led by the Spirit is central to Luke’s Gospel.  So far, the ministry of Mary, Elizabeth, John the Baptist and others flow from an experience of the Spirit.  The divine words experienced by Jesus tells us who he is, but they also invite us to remember who we are, beloved daughters and sons of a tender, loving God.  God delights in us.  God’s love in not something we have to earn; it is given because it is in the very nature of God to love.  We are called to be ever aware of this dignity which is ours, to grow in awareness of our true selves.

© Triona Doherty & Jane Mellet, 2021.  The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Luke.  (Dublin: Messenger Publications 2021.

“The descent into the waters of our spirit, is a journey into the presence of divinity.  Through immersion in waters of life there comes a realization that to be a child of the earth is to be a child of God …  All human beings are children of God, but not all live in the awareness that there is ‘that of God’ within them.                         – W. L. Wallace