God’s caress

Fr. Livio Tonello, director

We have just celebrated Christmas and Epiphany, the mystery of God who bows over man to the point of being born into poverty and becoming a man among men. A child has no defences and needs love and care: the Creator wanted to take on the shape of a child in Jesus to be touched and seen, making his greatness small. On the day of the Baptism of our Lord that marks the end of the liturgical Christmas season and that the Church celebrates on 9 January, Jesus’ public life begins. And it begins precisely with his baptism in the River Jordan: the liturgy takes a chronological leap of about thirty years: the years of the “hidden life” in the dimension of daily life without standing out. It is a fine message for us: it reveals the greatness of daily life, the importance in God’s eyes of every gesture and moment of life, even the simplest, even the most hidden. The Gospel takes us to the banks of the Jordan river where John the Baptist baptises with the water announcing that somebody will come and baptise in the Holy Spirit and that he is not worthy of untying the laces…