It’s hard to believe that we are already three weeks into the New Year! We are now back into Ordinary Time, but there is nothing “Ordinary” about it. Soon we will be beginning our Lenten journey towards the Easter Season. This is now the time to set our focus on making this an extraordinary ordinary time! Christ continues to invite us to walk with Him towards God, our Almighty Father, and the promise of Heaven. Three weeks into the New Year, many people have already forgotten the New Year’s resolutions that they set, and life has set back in to its chaotic reality. We need these Ordinary Time readings to help better ground us to what is important, and that is following Christ’s Words.

Our Gospel reading this weekend takes us to the moment that Jesus is walking towards John the Baptist. In a moment of spirited faith, John cries out with great passion that the “Lamb of God” is with us. John gives witness to what he saw when Jesus was baptized by him in the River Jordan: “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven and remain upon him.” Through this testimony of John the Baptist he is proclaiming that Jesus is indeed the “Son of God”, and the one whom Israel, and all human-kind, had been waiting for. John had been waiting for this moment his whole life to lay eyes on the Lord, and with love in his heart and fire in his soul, he testified with great enthusiasm so that others may give glory to God as well that the Savior has come! With the start of this New Year, let us set aside New Year’s resolutions and set our eyes on Christ, so that we, too, may feel the fire and passion that John had had on that life-changing day! Happy New Year!