This is the time of fulfillment...the Kingdom of God is at hand. After almost two months of preparing for, and celebrating Christmas, we too can today join Jesus in declaring that it is now the time for fulfillment. The season of Ordinary Time that was ushered in yesterday as we commemorated the Baptism of the Lord is the time of fulfillment. Indeed, it is the time for us to unpack the mysteries that we celebrated during Christmastide. We might have found ourselves caught up in the celebratory mood of Christmas so much so that we forgot to understand or become part of the mysteries that were being commemorated. The season of Ordinary Time thus becomes a time for us to sit back and relax (from the hectic nature of Christmas festivities) so that we can process the Christmas mysteries. In other words, this period becomes the right time for implementing the Christmas message. There is no better way to do this than by reflecting on the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry which is the content of today’s Gospel Reading.
Jesus began his public ministry by declaring the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. He referred to it as the time of fulfillment, the jubilee moment of the forgiveness of sins through repentance. This in-breaking of the kingdom is the very event that we celebrated at Christmas. Christmas celebrates Jesus coming to the world as the merciful, forgiving face of God, a God who wants to enter into a relationship with creation. Coming to the world as a child, Jesus invites creation into an innocent and sinless relationship with God and with itself. The Ordinary Time, then, becomes that time when we seek to turn our lives around by imitating the generosity and selflessness of God in the person of Jesus Christ. It becomes that special time when we too become incarnated as new creatures, for inebriated with the Christmas spirit, we have come to recognize that the Kingdom of God is indeed in our midst.