It was as I was preparing to preach on the Baptism of Christ a few Epiphanies ago that it first struck me that the words spoken over Jesus – ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’– take the form of a song, a canticle - in fact, the last and greatest in the wonderful series of canticles recorded for us in the early chapters of Luke.

Up to this point, of course, we have already been treated to the Magnificat, the Benedictus and the Nunc Dimittis, along with the first few lines of the Ave Maria and the Gloria: men and women, young and old, clergy and laity all contributing to this wonderful outburst of praise, with a great company of the heavenly host thrown in for good measure! But at this remarkable epiphany moment, as Jesus is raised from the waters of baptism, it is God Himself who joins in that outburst in a brief but heartfelt love song to ‘my Son, the Beloved’. It reminds us of the moving words of the prophet Zephaniah:

‘The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing’.

‘The Beloved’: it’s a phrase to which St. Paul returns in his letter to the Ephesians, where he writes of God’s ‘glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved’. And as we inch our way out of a pandemic that has so changed and challenged us all, it’s my Epiphany prayer for 2022 that we might be drawn afresh into the love of the Father for his Son and marvel afresh at the glorious grace through which that love song is extended to us all.