Our knowledge of the figure of John the Baptist is very limited. We have only those references to him in the Christian gospels, where he stands alongside of Jesus. We also have references to him in ...

The Baptism of the Lord closes the Christmas season. The next day begins the First Week of Ordinary Time, Lent following in five weeks on Feb. 17. The Christmas season is full of theophanies, i.e., ...

Remember the day of your baptism? It's highly unlikely, but your parents and godparents and an assortment of relatives probably do. Perhaps they remember the event itself, or the party, or something ...

Of all the sacred places in Israel, few are as humbling as the Jordan River. At first glance, it looks ordinary—a winding river, sometimes muddy, lined with reeds and trees. Yet it was here, in these ...

Why did Jesus need to be baptized? It was a delicate issue for the earliest Christians, as one can see in Matthew’s baptism account, in which “John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be ...

Just as Jesus’ baptism launched his public ministry, our own baptisms ordinate us to a life of humble obedience and costly service. All four Gospels tell the story of Jesus’ baptism, as if every ...

Along with yesterday’s feast of the Epiphany and the wedding at Cana, today’s feast, the Baptism of the Lord, is one of the three epiphanies of Jesus’ humanity, according to the early Church Fathers.