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 ...

With the arrival of Lent, many Christians enter a season marked by fasting and renewed spiritual focus. The 40-day observance recalls the period when Jesus of Nazareth withdrew into the wilderness ...

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 ...