There is a thin thread that links the birth of Jesus to today’s Gospel. Thirty years pass in which Jesus lives a normal life within a seemingly ordinary family. Until today, almost everything seems normal in his life.
Indeed, Jesus’ desire to be baptised surprises even John the Baptist, his cousin. He, who is the direct substance of the Father, without sin, wants to immerse himself in the river. Why?
For today something changes in the life of Jesus. He has reached adulthood and the time has come to take full responsibility for his life. Only today, the Son of God is ready to give form to his call, and he does so with the same ritual with which the first Christians choose the way of the Lord and say their ‘yes’.
Jesus is now ready to separate himself from his closest affections in order to individualise himself as a man, to express his identity, to realise God’s will in his own life and embrace his mission. Jesus is the Son of a God who again, as at his birth, makes himself humble amongst the needy, and food for the hungry. On the very day when he begins his public life, Jesus decides to make himself a pilgrim amongst pilgrims. Before becoming Master, before being the one who will show the way, he wants to be the one who immerses himself in the road, in the dust of the pavements of sinners, of the those distant and lost.
Today, God incarnates Himself anew in the life of humanity, making Himself close and near.
Becoming a man amongst men with the desire to make their humanity flourish is what makes him a
credible God.