Hi, I'm Edward Sree, and welcome to all things Catholic where real faith meets real life.

Every year in January the Catholic Church celebrates the baptism of the Lord.

We hear these stories of John the Baptist going out to the wilderness to prepare the

way of the Lord, but have you ever stopped to wonder why would

he begin his movement out there in the desert if you've ever been on a holy

lamb pilgrimage and you've gone to this traditional spot where the baptism

took place? You're looking around and you realize and this is in the middle of nowhere.

Why would John the Baptist start his movement to prepare the way for Jesus out there in the desert.

It seems crazy.

But if you understood with the eyes of a first century Jew, you would see that what John the Baptist was doing was making a very powerful

statement, a powerful statement not just about his own ministry, but about what Jesus

was coming to do.

So if you want to understand Jesus,

you want to understand his Messianic mission,

you want to understand all of his public ministry

that we're going to encounter in the readings

throughout this new liturgical year, then you need to understand why John the Baptist began

his ministry out in the middle of nowhere in the Jordan River in the wilderness of Judea.

And that's what we're going to talk about in this week's special edition of all things

Catholic.

It was recorded on location right there at the Jordan River when I was leading a Holy

Land pilgrimage there in 2019.

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