Last Sunday we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord, which is the official end of the Christmas Season. We are now in this brief period of Ordinary Time, which will last until the coming of Lent and Ash Wednesday.
   In some ways we can conceptualize the Christmas Season as the the season of Jesus’ private family life, and the other seasons as His public life. Jesus’ baptism is that transition from His private life to His public ministry. Ordinary Time encapsulates His teaching. We hear about His parables during this season, and see all of His miracles. All of this is to help point us to who He is, that is He is the promised Messiah, but more importantly He is telling us that He is also God. He is God, in part, because He is telling that He is.
Of the four Gospels it is St. John who is most concerned about revealing Jesus’ divinity to the reader. In fact, he wrote his Gospel as a response to a heresy that was becoming popular which denied the divinity of Jesus. It is very hard to deny that Jesus is God after reading St. John’s Gospel.
We can see this in the prologue of His Gospel. He begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” He is certainly borrowing from the opening lines of Genesis to show that the very God who created everything has become man in the person of Jesus Christ.
We also see Jesus’ divinity in today’s Gospel with the testimony of John the Baptist. After baptizing Jesus and experiencing the manifestation of the Triune God in that event, he tells his disciple, John the Apostle and author of this Gospel, that he as seen and can testify that Jesus is the Son of God. He is declaring the divinity of Jesus.
On top of confirming our faith, I think it is helpful to be convinced of Jesus’ divinity when we are experiencing the Cross. The Cross comes in different ways, whether its spiritual or physical suffering. It can even come through doubt. It is almost natural to go through some sort of doubt, even if its just intellectual. If we are firm in our understanding and belief that Jesus is God, then that can help carry us through the more difficult moments in our life.
When we encounter and persevere through the Cross the words of John the Baptist can become ours too, “Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.”