JANUARY 18, 2026
Jesus challenges us to a have a whole new way of looking at the world:
holiness is now contagious, and everywhere can be a sacred place and everyone can be a saint.
We have encountered the Christ, and this challenges us to transform all our relationships.
Everyone who is in Christ is a holy person and can spread holiness, everywhere can be a place where we can encounter the presence of God.
We must respect each other and the environment as a gift from God and react appropriately to its God-given nature. We cannot see it as just something that we can selfishly hijack as if it were just there. We tend to live in dualist universes: there is the sacred and the secular; the spiritual and the material; the holy and the unholy; the pure and the impure; the saints and the sinners. The love and holiness of God that became part of the creation in Jesus overcame all these dualisms and division. Holiness is contagious, goodness is diffusive, and care for the planet, care for the poor and oppressed, and care for self cannot be separated.
John the Baptist had the task of bearing witness to the incarnate Son among humanity; we have the task of bearing witness to its implications for how we treat the environment.
A man is coming after me who ranks before me
because he existed before me.
I did not know him myself,
and yet it was to reveal him to Israel
that I came baptising with water. (Jn 1:30-31)