The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time falls a week after our observance of the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which usually falls on the third Sunday after Christmas. It bears noting that the Church never celebrates a First Sunday in Ordinary Time. Each liturgical year, Ordinary Time begins on Monday or, in the United States, sometimes on Tuesday. Hence, the Second Sunday is the first observed Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Ordinary Time is not contrasted with “Extraordinary” Time. It refers to ordinal that, in turn, refers to a numbered sequence: first, second, third, etc. What is numbered are Sundays. As Christians, Mother Church teaches we are obligated to worship God together on Sundays and holy days, which we are to live like Sunday. This is one of the five precepts of the Church.1
This year, the Church is in Year A of the Sunday Lectionary, which means that we primarily read through the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Oddly enough, however, we begin Ordinary Time with a reading taken from the first chapter of Saint John’s Gospel.
What better way to begin than by recognizing Jesus, as John the Baptist did, as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world and “the Son of God”?2 It’s easy to miss that each Gospel account of the Lord’s Baptism also includes an account of His confirmation. Confirmation, a sacrament closely related to baptism and can be said to make baptism more complete, is often not well-understood.
What is sacramentally confirmed is your baptismal identity as a child of the Father, through Jesus Christ, effected by the power of the Holy Spirit. Baptism is a high calling. Baptism, not the sacrament of orders, is the fundamental sacrament of the Christian life.
What is confirmed at His Baptism, is Jesus’ identity as the Only Begotten Son of the Father. He is the one on whom John saw the Spirit come down and upon whom the Spirit remained. There is no one like Jesus Christ. No one compares to Him.
In his timeless classic, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis observed that it only makes sense that Jesus told people that their sins were forgiven. . . “if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.” Lewis went on to insist that he makes this point to prevent someone from saying something “really foolish,” like “’I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’”3
Lewis concludes this line of reasoning by asserting:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God4Of course, in our Gospel today, it is the Baptist who identifies Jesus as Savior and divine Son of God. There is no better way to begin this, or any season, than by declaring Jesus as the Christ, our Lord and Savior. This is why, at its most fundamental, Christianity isn’t merely a moral code but a person.
It is through baptism and confirmation and ongoing participation in the Eucharist that, to quote Saint Paul from our reading from 1 Corinthians, you “have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy.”5 Our reading from Isaiah is taken to be about the revelation of God in Christ. The Father has indeed made His Son, “a light to the nations.” It is our mission as Christ’s Body, the Church, to bring God’s salvation to the ends of the earth.6
My dear friends, the year is still new. As Christians, as those who have been sanctified in Christ and called to be holy, our resolution each year, each month, each week, each day should be follow Christ more closely. Following Him is the only sure road not to some destination but to your destiny.
The Lord leads you not just to the Cross but through it. The road to destiny must pass through the Cross. It’s tempting to be like Peter and demur when told where following the Lord leads. This is why it is so important to experience for yourself just how the Lord walks with you through the valley of the shadow of death.7
Following Jesus doesn’t only amount to being nice. As Major Frank Burns once observed: “It’s nice to be nice to the nice.” While being kind is important, being a Christian is more than that. I don’t know about you, but I think I could manage to be pretty nice to most people most of the time even if I weren’t a Christian.8
It seems fitting as we enter Ordinary Time to simply preach the Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It’s the basis of the Gospel. This is why we can affirm that one is saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
While it is certainly true that the Lord accepts you as you are, He loves you too much to leave you as you are. A true encounter with the risen Christ disrupts your life. It changes you and causes you to want to change, to be more and more conformed to the image of Christ.
Christ calls each of us to repentance. Without repentance, one is simply not a Christian. Scripture teaches “all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.”9 This is why we need a Savior, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
In casting the net that broadly, it’s easy to forget or overlook that my sins contribute to the sins of the world. But we adore and bless Christ because, to cite Mere Christianity yet again:
When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you'd been the only [person] in the world10As the last verse of a hymn used in the Liturgy of the Hours puts it:
My friends, this Lord Jesus…
is God the Savior,
He is Christ the Lord,
Ever to be worshipped,
Always blest adored11
1 Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, sec. 431-432.↩
2 John 1:29.↩
3 Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 3, “The Shocking Alternative.”↩
4 Ibid.↩
5 1 Corinthians 1:2.↩
6 Isaiah 49:6.↩
7 Psalm 23:4.↩
8 Mere Christianity, Book IV, Chapter 10- “Nice People or New Men?”↩
9 Romans 3:23.↩
10 Mere Christianity, Book IV, Chapter 3, “Time and Beyond.”↩
11 Caroline M. Noel. "At the Name of Jesus."↩
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