Isaiah says the servant people of God will become a “light to the nations.” In what ways do I and other parish leadership help the people of the parish to be sources of goodness and light to the community?

First impressions can be deceiving. Think of the people who are in your life today and compare your original perception of them with what you know now. Sometimes our initial “take” on someone is off by a little, and sometimes by a lot.

The very next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and yelled out, “Here he is, God’s Passover Lamb! He forgives the sins of the world! This is the man I’ve been talking about, ‘the One who comes after me but is really ahead of me.’ I knew nothing about who he was—only this: that my task has been to get Israel ready to recognize him as the God-Revealer.

Years ago my wife and I went to a concert and at intermission a whiny teenage vendor kept calling out, “Orange juice, take it to your seats!” For some reason those words and his nasally inflection stayed with us, and now when my wife offers orange juice, I’ll often chime in with, “Take it to your seats.”

In Richard Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger, a night watchman walks through an apparently deserted street calling out, “Hear, people, what I say, the clock has struck 10; guard your fire and also your light so that no one comes to harm! Praise God the Lord!”

Scripture for today tells us of God's call to God's faithful ones. Let us pray for hearts and minds open to the call to follow the Lord.

The Lord was baptized . . . to cleanse waters, so that those waters . . . might have the power of Baptism.