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Welcome to Unpacking the Mass with Keith Nestor. On this podcast, we dig into the week's readings for the upcoming Sunday for the Catholic Church so that when you go to Mass, you are ready to hear what God has to say to you through the scriptures. So grab your Bibles and let's get digging. Hey, friends, welcome to Unpacking the Mass. Today we're looking at the readings for the baptism and of the Lord Jesus Christ baptized, and when we pray, the luminous mysteries. Of course, this is the first luminous mystery, the baptism of the Lord and the spiritual fruit, openness to the Holy Spirit. We'll talk a little bit about that later. But have you ever asked yourself the question, why did Jesus need to be baptized? John basically said the same thing. Why are you coming to me? I should be going to you and. And yet. That is the point, my friends. That's the point. Jesus, answer, let it be done to fulfill all righteousness. We're going to talk about what that means, what it meant for Jesus and what it means for us. And before we do, we're going to jump in with a word of prayer. So let's begin. In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. The voice of the Father. This is my beloved Son with him I am well pleased. Lord, we want to hear that said about us, that we are pleasing to the Father. So help us to be imitators of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who was baptized for us. We pray these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Spoiler alert. That's really the bottom line. Christ's baptism is about his mission. The mission of Christ begins at his baptism in some sense and is fulfilled, of course, in the resurrection and the crucifixion. All these things are connected together, my friends, and we're going to look at that today. I love that the church gives us these readings today. The first one, of course, from Isaiah 42, speaking about the suffering servant. Let's take a look. Behold my servant, whom I uphold, My chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street. A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice. And in the earth and the coastlands wait for his law. I am the Lord. I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you. I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison, those who sit in darkness. Our second reading is from Acts, chapter 10, verses 34 through 38, and it reads this. And Peter opened his mouth and said, truly I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all the Word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. How he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. Wow. I love that stuff. Boom. Acts is amazing. And then of course, our Gospel From Matthew, chapter 3, verses 13 through 17, and it reads this way. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water. And behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And lo, a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Awesome stuff. Now, of course, when you look at the first reading in Isaiah 42, I mean, it's pretty plain that this is about Jesus. This is about the Messiah, God's anointed one. And he identifies him as this servant, right? This suffering servant, as we call him. Now, when you think about what it means that he is a servant, we have to contrast this idea of the Messiah as a servant with what people understood about different ideas of gods. And this is unique to Jesus. The Messiah doesn't come. Remember, Jesus would say this, I did not come. The Son of Man did not come to be served, but rather to serve. Which this is a complete contrast to the gods of the heathens, the that required sacrifice unto them. And even in some ways, the way that the Jews related to Yahweh, to Jehovah, they related to him. We've got to serve him, right? And of course, we do need to serve God. But then here comes the anointed One. And this prophecy says he is coming to be a servant. And when we think about that, we go, wow, what does this mean? We have images in our mind of Jesus not just talking like this, but actually doing it. What does he do? He washes the feet of the disciples. And he says, look, I've come to serve you, and if I've done this, so you must do likewise. Now, what does it mean that he is a servant? What does this mean? We think about that. His mission is isn't oriented around himself. So that's the first thing I would say. His mission is not oriented around himself. It's oriented around others. He came for us. He came to fulfill the will of the Father. Jesus did not come down here to be served by us. And for his own sake, he came for our sake. That's the orientation that we have to recognize is found in God. Other gods, you know, of course they're not real. Their orientation is all about, hey, it's all about me. And as his disciples, we must orient ourselves toward others as well. That's tough, isn't it? Because we don't start that way, do we? When we think about how we're oriented versus how Jesus is oriented. I don't know about you, but I see a pretty stark contrast. Because humanity in and of itself always begins with self. And you have to look no further than this than how we're oriented as little babies. I mean, have you ever taught a little baby to be selfish? Of course not. You don't have to. They already are. This is interesting. Even the good ones, right? I mean, we have one of the best. Our granddaughter is absolutely amazing. She's the sweetest thing in the world. She is the light of our lives. I mean, we love spending time with her. And yet I never see her coming into the house or with her parents or with us, saying, oh, how can I serve you today? Her cries are never about, hey, wait, you don't have something that you want. Her cries are always about what she wants. Now she's one, so that's what you would expect. But you don't have to teach little children to be selfish. Their favorite word from birth is, you know, mama. Which is why, because Mama gives to them. The next favorite word will be mine, you know, followed by no. And where does no come from when you're trying to get them to do something that you want them to do? We see this now. Do we really change as human beings? Our default position is one of self. But Christ comes and his default position is about service and this is important. The second thing about Jesus being identified as the servant here is that he's motivated by love. If you notice that, it's one thing to serve, but it's a completely different thing to serve with love. Have you ever been served but there was no love involved? Think about it. You ever go to a restaurant and you walk in, you sit down, and the server comes over to you and is completely just without any interest in who you are, what your needs are, they just want to get done. I've been served like that plenty of times. It's not fun, is it? That can ruin an experience. It can ruin an otherwise amazing meal. If you have bad service because the server is inattentive or clearly has no regard for you, you could be served the best meal of all and still walk away going, I'm never going back there again. And yet at the same time, the opposite is true, isn't it? If the food is a little bit cold or it comes out late or something isn't right. But your server is super loving and they're just like, oh, I want you to have a great time and what can I do to help you? And maybe they're apologetic if something goes wrong. You could put up with a bad product if the service is good. But bad service will not save a good product. Do you see what I'm saying here? If you've ever been served by someone but without love, you know that that's just not really a good experience. And yet Christ, he serves with love. Why is that important? Because that's Jesus way. And if we're going to follow him, hey, it's got to be our way too. Is it? Have you ever served someone but you let them know that you did that out of obligation and you really didn't want to? I mean, let's face it, we've done that before, haven't we? All right, fine. We'll do it your way. All right, fine, I'll do what you want. How does that typically go in your relationships? If you do what somebody else wants, but you complain about it or grumble about it or let them know that you really don't want to do that? Nobody likes to be treated that way. Nobody likes to be served that way. And sometimes we can, if we're not operating out of a place of love. We can treat other people as though they are a burden to us and we'll serve them, but we will let them know that we're not happy about it. Can you imagine Jesus doing that? Can you imagine Jesus washing The feet of his disciples going, man, I can't believe I have to do this. I know this is going to be in John's gospel. I got to do this for everybody. But you know what? Here's the deal. I really don't want to. I can't believe you had to step in that, all right? But you know what? This is what I got to do, so you better appreciate it. Does that sound like something Jesus would say? Sound like the way he would be? And yet, as his disciples, how oftentimes do we react like that? Think about it, my friends. And then number three, here, we know that Jesus wants the best for us because he loves us. So we can trust him in the way that he serves us with love. He wants what's best for us. Think about that when someone is serving you. And I can talk about this from a standpoint of when I used to be in photography, okay? My job was to serve my clients by taking their photos. And, you know, sometimes I had to convince them that I wanted to give them the best pictures that they could ever have. Sometimes I had to, like, you know, plead with them to trust me, because sometimes people would come in and they'd be like, look, here's my Pinterest board of all the best, amazing photos. And you need to do it this way. And sometimes we'd be taking pictures of, like, a high school senior, and the mom would be over our shoulder going, I don't know about this. And are you really sure you want to do it that way? And this and that. And, you know, that made for a rough experience. The people that were easiest to serve were the ones that knew that I wanted what was best for them. And, you know, it's interesting when you go to a restaurant and you know that the person wants you to have a good experience, you can trust them to do their job. Have you ever been someplace and you weren't really sure what you were going to eat? And you asked the server, what do you recommend? And they asked you, well, what do you like? What kind of things are you into? And they go, okay, well, if you like this, then you'll like this. And then you can just trust them. That's a fantastic experience, isn't it? Because you know that they want you to have a good experience. But if you. But you would never do that to the server, who's just like, yeah, what do you want? Well, what do you recommend? I don't care. You wouldn't do that. Jesus doesn't serve that way. He loves us. He wants what's best with us. So that means that we don't have to look over his shoulder when he's in the act of serving us, because we know that he knows what he's doing and that he loves us. And when that lines up, magic happens. It's amazing. And we see that in our own relationships. When we would take pictures and, you know, the mom would come to us and say, oh, we know. We want you. We've been on your website, We've seen your work, or maybe you took pictures of our. Of our friends or our family. We know you guys know what you're doing. Just do your thing. And you know, when we would have that freedom to do that without having to argue or to sort of advocate for our own ideas, we were able just to give the best service we could give. Think about this for a second when thinking the context of your relationship with God. Do you believe that God has come to lovingly serve you and that he knows what you need? That he knows what's best for you? Or are you looking over his shoulder all the time telling him what he needs to do? Well, are you sure about that? Are you really gonna do it that way? What about this? Hold on a minute. Let me pull out my phone and show you what I really want. Can you do that? How many of us treat God like that? Like we don't trust that he knows what he's doing when it comes to serving us, friends, we got to be convicted about that. Because the servant of Isaiah 42 is Jesus Christ and He loves you. He created you. He knows what's best for you. Therefore, just let him do what he needs to do in your life. My friends. It's interesting a couple other things from that first reading that I think minister to me and maybe to you as well, where he talks about how a bruised reed, he will not break. What does that even mean? What does it mean when it talks about a dimly burning wick? He will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. When Christ serves us, he knows what we need. And we have to trust him that when we're down, when we are out of it, when we are ashamed, when we feel lost, he's not going to pile on. He's not going to kick us while we're down. His mission is not to crush us, it's to build us up in Him. This is part of why you can trust him, because you know that his goal is not to shame you, but to save you. I just want to add that, my friends, it's so important. Now, this verse in Acts. These verses in Acts. Let's talk about this for a second. This second reading. This is, of course, St. Peter preaching. And he's reminding all of these people that. That in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know, this is radical because a lot of the Jews believed it was just about them. But this servant has come to all. And what does this mean? It means that he is Lord of all. Just like was promised. The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and they would fulfill what Jesus said to preach the gospel. Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, the ends of the earth. Like it was this circle that went out. And that's what began at his anointing. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. This is talking about his baptism and what he came to do. Remember, Messiah literally means anointed one. In verse 38 of Acts 10. We see that there. It's powerful stuff. All right, now let's look at our gospel, and we're going to ask this question. Why does Jesus need to be baptized? And why does his baptism fulfill all righteousness? Have you ever asked that question? If you do, you're in good company. I mean, John the Baptist asked that question, too. You know, why are we doing this? I should be baptized by you, and yet you come to me. Friends, think about that for a second. Think about how strange that must have been for John, because John is baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins, right? And Jesus has no sin. John has sin. And John knows that Jesus has no sin. So he's like, this doesn't compute here with what I understand. But what John doesn't quite understand is what Jesus is doing in this. But yet, when Jesus says, we got to do this, what does John do? He obeys. Sometimes you're not going to understand what God's trying to do in you or what he wants you to do. Sometimes it's going to feel like you're not qualified. Like you go, I shouldn't be doing this. What are you crazy? For John to fulfill all righteousness was to baptize Jesus. What does it mean for you to fulfill all righteousness? We'll get to that in a minute. But let's talk about what that was all about. What does it mean? Well, you know, our catechism has a really cool passage about this. In paragraph 5, 36, it reads this. The baptism of Jesus is on his part, the acceptance and inauguration of his mission as God's suffering servant. He allows himself to be numbered among sinners. He is already the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Already he is anticipating the baptism of his bloody death. Already he is coming to fulfill all righteousness. That is, he is submitting himself entirely to his Father's will. Out of love. He consents to this baptism of death for the remission of sins. The Father's voice responds to the Son's acceptance, proclaiming his entire delight in his Son. The Spirit, whom Jesus possessed in fullness from his conception, comes to rest on him. Jesus will be the source of the Spirit for all mankind. At his baptism, the heavens were opened. The heavens that Adam's sin had closed and the waters were sanctified by the descent of Jesus and the Spirit, a prelude to the new creation. Wow, friends, isn't that incredible? Jesus steps into our place. He is accepting our place, sinners. And Pope Benedict talks about this in his book Jesus of Nazareth, how the crucifixion is connected to baptism. Because the reason why Jesus has to be baptized is the same reason that he has to be crucified to step into our place. We're the ones that need to be baptized and we're the ones that need to be crucified. And yet Jesus takes both of those on, doesn't he? That's part of his mission. Remember that his mission is oriented toward us, not toward Himself. And to step into our place. That's why he was baptized. Of course. We also see this picture of the Trinity here. The Son, obviously the voice from heaven, from the Father and the Spirit descending upon Jesus. Powerful, that voice. This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. The Father is pleased with the Son's obedience. He's pleased with the suffering servant because he fulfills all righteousness. And again, we celebrate that today. And remember that we too are called into that baptism. We too are called into to fulfill all righteousness. And this is our goal for the New Year, isn't it? Now, we're just a few days into this New Year, and how are we doing? How are you doing with your New Year's resolutions? Are you fulfilling all righteousness? What does it look like for us? That's really the goal here. That's what we're trying to do with unpacking the Mass, with everything else we're doing. We're looking at Jesus and saying, I want to follow you. What does that look like? Well, I'll close with three things. Of course, there's always three. Have you ever noticed that you're probably Like Keith, what's the deal with three? It's part of my upbringing as a pastor, I guess, you know, in ministry there's always three. Maybe sometimes I do more. Number one, give thanks to God for Jesus. Every servant loves to be appreciated. I mean, let's face it, when you give of yourself, when you serve someone and they show gratitude, it makes you feel. Makes you feel good. And it makes you want to serve even more, doesn't it? Now, Jesus doesn't need us to say thank you for his own sake, but I'm sure he appreciates it. And we have to give thanks to God for Jesus. Part of our disposition toward the Father needs to be one of Thanksgiving. I mean, St. Paul tells us with thanksgiving we present our requests, known to be God. I mean, how many times are we told to be thankful? In everything that we do, we give thanks to God. And part of that is this recognition that we didn't deserve this, that this is about grace, that the servant has come to us out of love, that we aren't entitled to this. But we are given the grace of Jesus baptism so that we can be saved and set free, that we can be washed from our sin. He didn't have to be washed from any sin. He was washed for us. And we too must be washed in those waters of baptism. And it's the grace that he gives to us that does that, my friends. And we should be thankful. The more thankful you are, the more aware of the fact that you are being served. Think about that. When people aren't grateful for acts of service in your life, what do you say? Did they even realize what I've done for them? You know, when someone says thank you for doing that, the reason why that feels good is because there's an acknowledgment that they had a need and you were able to meet that need. And that's good for your relationship, isn't it? And when you are also acknowledging that you've been served, it helps you to have gratitude. So it's like this. You know, people talk about the vicious cycle. This is like a good cycle. To receive the service of God and to be thankful and have gratitude is going to make you even more aware of what he's done. It's powerful. So give thanks to God for the suffering servant Jesus number two. And this again, how do you. What's the best way to give thanks to? Just let him do it. The best way to give thanks to God for how he has served you is to submit to that process and allow it to take root in your life. Have you ever tried to serve someone and they wouldn't let you do it? And maybe they were thankful. They're like, oh, no, thank you so much, but no, no, no, I'll do it. Thank you so much, but no, no, no, no, it's unnecessary or I can't accept that. I know what that feels like. I read a book once from a guy who had gone through some very terrible tragedies. And he talked about all the people that came around him in the wake of his tragedies. And he said, you know, I learned something about humanity through this tragedy. He said, sometimes the best thing you can do for another person is to let them help you. Sometimes the best thing you can do, the greatest gift you can give someone else is to let them help you. Because when someone is feeling that God given desire to serve and to give, and you thwart that by your, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I couldn't accept that or I won't accept that. We might do that out of pride or a sense of humility, but really it's pride. We might, we might do it out of pride. We might think, no, no, no, no, no. But that's really what it is, isn't it? It's pride. To be humble is to accept the service of other people. And we need to be that way toward God. The best way to appreciate God serving you is to receive it. Think about Peter. When Jesus washed their feet at first, what did he say? Oh, no, no, Lord, you shall never wash my feet. Did Jesus go, wow, you know what? All these other guys let me do it. But I knew that I could count on you, Peter. I knew that when I got to you and your stinky feet, that of all the guys here, you would be the one who'd be like, hey, Jesus, come on, this is ridiculous. It was a test. Everybody else failed and you succeeded. Well done, Peter. Is that what Jesus did? No. He said to Peter, you don't understand this. You know, if I don't wash you, you will have no part with me. He said, if you don't let me serve you, you can't have relationship with me. That is the key right there. When it comes to God, if we don't let him serve us, that. That pride can separate us from his saving work in our life. Some people fall away from God because, you know, they don't have time for him. Other people fall away from God because they don't think they need him. I don't need you to do that. For me. No, no, no, no, no, no. Let him serve you. That's the best way you can show gratitude. So I'll say it this way. Allow him to serve you by saving you. That means cooperate. Oh, what are the works that you have to do? Catholics. That's the work. Cooperate with what he's doing in your life to save you. That's the work. You know, we get beat up all the time. Oh, you guys think you gotta earn your salvation, all that. No one's saying that. But if you want to press us on that, that's the work. That's what you gotta do. You have to cooperate with what he's trying to do in your life to save you. You want to call that a work? Fine. I don't care. Number three, imitate his obedience by serving others with love. It's not enough just to do the serving thing, right? We got to do it with love. Because we can't join our obedience and our service to his if we don't have his mindset, if we serve other people. Because that's why Jesus, you know, if we serve because of what we want to get. That's why he said, look, don't bring people to a party because you want to get invited to a party. Don't do unto others because of what you want them to do unto you. Don't have those ulterior motives of service. Don't just, you know, bring the rich person in and give him the best seat in the house. As James would say in his Epistle, don't serve people based on what they can do for you. Serve them out of love. And when you serve out of love, that just opens the playing field, doesn't it? Now, there's nobody off limits if you're trying to serve people, only based on the ones who love you or the ones who can give you something. Boom. That's a very narrow group, isn't it? Think about that. Peter talked about how he's Lord of all, not just the ones that he looked at and said, oh, well, they can do something for me. No, friends, when we need to serve others, we need to do that with love. And that means that we don't put limits around whom God has called us to serve. See, that's still operating out of selfishness, isn't who we look around, all right? I got to help somebody. Who am I going to help? Well, okay. Not that person. Not that person. Oh, I like that guy over there. Yeah. You know, he could do a lot for me. I'll go do something for him. And of course, I'll make sure he knows that it was me who served him. You know, think about that. We gave gifts to the church recently that we have a new deacon that's coming in to basically, like, live at our parish for a period of time. And the priest put out a text message to a bunch of us that said, hey, we really need some things here at the residence. So, you know, here's a list of stuff that he needs. And, you know, we went and bought some stuff, and I went and dropped it off. And for a second I thought, wait a minute. There's literally nothing on this thing that we bought that indicates who it's from. And I thought, you know what? Wait a minute, do I need to. Then it was like, the Holy Spirit hit me, like, nope, doesn't matter who it's from. From a parishioner. Doesn't matter that he doesn't need to know it was us. You know, when you give, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. I mean, this is the idea. And we need to do that with serving as well. We need to serve with love, not at all thinking about what's in it for us. So imitate his obedience by serving others with love. And if you're struggling to figure out how to do that, you know, take a cue from what I just said and find a way to serve somebody anonymously. You might say, well, how can I love them if I am anonymous? Sometimes that's the best way. Sometimes that's the best way. When you just do something for someone, they don't even know it was you in your heart, that's a loving thing to do. Think about it. And here's the beautiful thing about our faith. The more you work through with this stuff with God and the Spirit descends upon you and begins to guide you in your life, you don't have to sit around and, like, create this big, you know, schematic of how you're going to serve. You just let the Lord guide you and you follow what he says. And even in those moments, like John, when you go, what? I can't do? That, the Spirit will say to you, hey, this is what needs to be done to fulfill all righteousness. And then it just boils down to this. Are you gonna do it? John did that. He put himself aside and he served Jesus. And in the same way Jesus served him. Pretty cool, huh? Thanks for watching unpacking the mask this week, my friends. I look forward to being back here with you next week. Have a great day and God bless.