This week.

Did you make a new year’s resolution? Despite what you did last year, was this the year you resolved to try to exercise more, study more, spend more time with friends or less time on your phone?  Did you resolve to be more patient with your parents, more thoughtful to the person you date or take a risk and put yourself out there to begin to date?  Those resolutions, the triumph of hope over experience, are about our recognition that we can be better than we are, that there’s a way to live life with others which we’re not quite getting the most out of now.  Resolutions are ultimately about saying we see things differently now and, however imperfect we may actually live it out, we’re going to try and be that better self.

Jesus isn’t just born and baptized just to help us be better people; he’s born and baptized to show us who he is, and who God is.  I’m not sure if it caught your attention from Sunday’s gospel, but Jesus tells John that his baptism must happen to fulfill all ‘righteousness.’ That’s a word we’re not familiar with, though Matthew’s gospel will make much use of it; often, for us, it means ‘holy,’ ‘pious,’ or ‘perfect,’ but for Matthew it means Jesus understands himself as someone to live into a way of life. That life is as the Messiah, the one come to inaugurate the kingdom of God. That’s why we are baptized too, to engage in our own way into that way of life and to do our part for the kingdom of God.

It’s a new year and a new semester; you begin with a new schedule, new classes with new professors and classmates, and new eyes in which to see yourself on campus. Whether you’ve resolved to begin this new year and new semester trying to do some things differently or you’re hoping for more of the same from last year, may you see yourself in a new way as a part of the mission of the Messiah who came to earth, who was baptized, and who calls us to follow to be agents of change for ourselves and for those around us. New ways of living and loving are possible, and we’re capable of change, but only if we, like John, recognize that what we’re invited to see and live isn’t just a life centered around ourselves but a life lived in recognition of God who lives with us and invites us to live a new way of life together.

–Thomas