But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” — Matthew 3:14 It’s a good question: Why did Jesus Christ need to be baptized? That’s basically the question ...

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., ...

Bethany Beyond the Jordan was a spiritual experience my lapsed Catholic self was not expecting. It reminded me that whatever your religious constructs, the teachings of Jesus are of kindness, ...

Question: John 3:22 records: "After this, Jesus and his disciples went to the Judean countryside, where he spent time with them and baptized." Who did Jesus baptize? - Community Bible Study, North ...

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 ...

Of all the sacred places in Israel, few are as humbling as the Jordan River. At first glance, it looks ordinary—a winding river, sometimes muddy, lined with reeds and trees. Yet it was here, in these ...

My dad grew up with two relatives who were eccentric, to say the least. One was an uncle who showed up periodically to sleep on the front porch — often deciding that clothing was an unnecessary ...

I have a friend who creatively blends his ethnic and religious heritage. He is a black man with an Afrocentric consciousness and also a committed Christian. His Afrocentric commitment does not nullify ...

The title “servant of God” (Hebrew, ebed) in Isaiah, which appears in a number of “Servant Songs,” is a complex one. When ebed was translated from Hebrew to Greek in the Septuagint, it was translated ...