Friends, this Sunday, right before the commencement of Lent, the Church is giving us something of great moment to reflect on—namely, the centrality of freedom and choice for the good at the center of the spiritual life. As Thomas More puts it in A Man for All Seasons, “God made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.” God wants us to give him glory in a particular way: through our intellect and will—our search for truth and our love for him.

Friends, a great professor of mine at Mundelein Seminary, Dr. Richard Issel, once said, “If you want to be happy, stop worrying about being happy and get on with becoming fulfilled.” We find something similar in Jordan Peterson’s observation that “self-consciousness is equivalent to misery.” In short, we’re most unhappy when we’re turned inward, fussing about ourselves. If you want to be psychologically healthy, forget about yourself and move out toward others. I always think of this when I come across our Gospel for today from the great Sermon on the Mount.

Friends, for the next several weeks, we’re going to be reading in our Gospel from the primal teaching of Jesus: the Sermon on the Mount. And we begin today with a kind of overture to it, which we call the Beatitudes. “Beatitudo” in Latin means “happiness”—the one thing we all want, no matter who we are or what our background is. Jesus, the definitive teacher, is instructing us on what will make us happy—and so we listen.

Friends for this Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, our first reading from the prophet Isaiah and our Gospel from Matthew both have a section that’s a little weird. While most preachers skip over these sections to get to the better-known and understandable parts, I want to dwell, on purpose, on the strange parts—and they have to do with the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali.

Friends, we return now to Ordinary Time, and the Church asks us again to think about the baptism of the Lord, this time in light of Saint John’s distinctive account. John the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him on the banks of the River Jordan, and the Baptist says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” You recognize that line from the Mass, when the priest holds up the consecrated elements and repeats John the Baptist’s words. This declaration is of absolutely decisive significance, for John is giving us the interpretive lens by which we see and understand Jesus.

Friends, we come to this wonderful feast of the baptism of the Lord. And the first thing to know is that this was a profoundly embarrassing event for the first Christians. Jesus is the son of God, the sinless Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. So why is he going to John the Baptist to seek a baptism of repentance? Jesus begins his public ministry with a kind of embarrassing, humiliating act—and, in a way, that is the point of it.

Friends, why has the story of the Epiphany—the three wise man paying homage to the Christ child—so captivated us over the centuries? I think, in some ways, it tells the whole spiritual life: our infinite longing that will never be satisfied here below; the following of beautiful but ambiguous signs in our quest for God; and the revelation that the one we seek has all along been seeking us—and, in the fullness of time, has come in person to meet us.

Friends, the great feast of the Holy Family follows immediately upon Christmas—a very interesting juxtaposition with a deep theological significance. The Savior came as a little baby who required the protection of a family, and from the beginning, he was opposed by forces both seen and unseen. Christmas is finally about the birth of Jesus in us—a life that might begin as something very vulnerable and that the dark powers don’t want flourishing. What do we need to protect that Christ life within?