Repetitive Repeating

Jan. 6: Christmas Weekday

Today’s reflection kinda devolved into literary criticism, probably because my parents gave my A Preface to Paradise Lost for Christmas.

Which is not to say I’m on par with C.S. Lewis; just that that sort of thing is on my mind.

Reading 1

1 Jn 5:5-13

Beloved: Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

This is the one who came through water and Blood, Jesus Christ, not by water alone, but by water and Blood. The Spirit is the one who testifies, and the Spirit is truth. So there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the Blood, and the three are of one accord. If we accept human testimony, the testimony of God is surely greater. Now the testimony of God is this, that he has testified on behalf of his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar by not believing the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life,
and this life is in his Son. Whoever possesses the Son has life; whoever does not possess the Son of God does not have life.

I write these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believe in the name of the Son of God.

Jesus’ ministry starts with his baptism (water), and ends with his crucifixion (blood). Some people (remember, John’s epistle is meant to counter heretics) said Jesus was just a man who was baptized.

But John points out that Jesus isn’t just another prophet who was baptized. (John the Baptist baptized a lot of people, many of them good, upstanding rabbis that others could look up to.) Jesus was more than that. At His baptism, the sky opened up, and a the Spirit testified He was God’s beloved son. (Which we’ll see in today’s Gospel.)

John (the writer, not the Baptist)¹ wants to be crystal clear: you can’t half-accept Jesus. He’s not just a cool dude with nice ideas who wants everyone to get along. He is the Christ, who brings eternal life.

Responsorial Psalm

PS147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20

R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
Glorify the LORD, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion.
For he has strengthened the bars of your gates;
he has blessed your children within you.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
He has granted peace in your borders;
with the best of wheat he fills you.
He sends forth his command to the earth;
swiftly runs his word!
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
He has proclaimed his word to Jacob,
his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.
He has not done thus for any other nation;
his ordinances he has not made known to them. Alleluia.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.

God blessed his Chosen People: they’re the ones He gave His law to. The psalmist doesn’t know it at the time of writing this, but all of it was to prepare the world for the Messiah. In today’s Gospel, we see the final prophet, John the Baptist, help Jesus take his first step into His ministry.

All of history and sacred scripture led to this moment.

Alleluia 

SEE Mk 9:6

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The heavens were opened and the voice of the Father thundered:
This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

At first reading, I was confused, mixing these verses up with the ones in today’s Gospel. But this Gospel acclamation is from the Transfiguration, eight chapters later.

Gospel

Mk 1:7-11

This is what John the Baptist proclaimed: "One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

It happened in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John. On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."

I find myself struggling to think of something to say, because we’ve already talked about John the Baptist a lot during the Advent and Christmas season. Which makes sense—it’s the beginning of the Church year, so we’re talking about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. But the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) make for some repetitive reading.

Which may be the point. Repetition does help us remember important lessons.

Some scholars theorize that there is an unknown Gospel, known as “The Q Document,
that all three writers of the synoptics copied from. There’s no evidence that Q exists, not even a reference to it from other sources. It’s just a something they came up with to account for why the Gospels are so similar to each other, despite being written years apart, in different places in the world, attributed to different authors.

The other possibility, of course, is that these things happened, so multiple accounts record the same actual events.

Textual analysis does tell us that Matthew and Luke probably read Mark’s Gospel, and added or subtracted based on the needs of their intended audience, but I see no need to invent a mysterious 4th source out of whole cloth.

Anyway, all of this is an aside. The point of today’s Gospel is that Jesus, who never sinned and therefore didn’t require baptism, submitted himself to baptism anyway as an example for all of us. Mark is the more taciturn of the evangelists, so he doesn’t give us John’s reaction, either to meeting the guy who’s sandals he wasn’t fit to tie, or from seeing the sky literally open.

Weird details to leave out, but if I was an uneducated fisherman writing the biography of Son of God by hand, I’d probably use as few words as possible, too.

1. This is never not confusing.