of the Baptism of the LordJan. 10, 2010
Luke 3: 15-16, 21-22
Willow Towers, New Rochelle
Provincial House, N.R.
“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3: 16).
John the Baptist has made a deep impression upon the people of Judea and “the whole region of the Jordan” (3:3) with his passionate preaching, with his call for repentance, with his ability to address the spiritual needs and everyday realities of everyone who comes to him (cf. 3:7-14).
But when the crowds coming to him wonder whether he “might be the Christ,” the Anointed One of God (3:15), he makes it clear that he isn’t. There’s no comparison between his mission, what he has to offer, and what the Anointed, “one mightier” than he (3:16), has to offer. John has only a symbolic baptism, a symbolic cleansing, signifying the recipient’s interior repentance and readiness to receive something that God will offer. The mightier one has that something, that reality beyond symbolism, to give to those who repent: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
In the Scriptures fire signifies God: the divine presence, as when Moses saw the burning bush and spoke with God (Ex 3), when the Israelites were led by a column of fire (Ex 13:21, etc.), when Mt. Sinai was enveloped in cloud and flame (Ex 19:18), when the lips of Isaiah were cleansed by a fiery coal (Is 6:6-7). The Christ will baptize people with the Holy Spirit and turn them into temples of God.Before Jesus can give the Holy Spirit, he must receive the Spirit. This refers to the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth, of course, not to the divine Person; the Son of God obviously always shared the Spirit with his Father. Similarly, Luke and the other evangelists record that Jesus prayed (3:21, etc.)—as a man, not as God, showing that his human mind and human will had to be and were totally in union with the Divinity and teaching us so to attune our minds and wills.
The Fathers of the Church, the Doctors of the Church, and theologians generally have always described the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus as an anointing. The Spirit was poured out upon him like oil. In fact, today’s Pauline reading speaks of the Holy Spirit being “richly poured out on us thru Jesus Christ our Savior” (Tit 3:5-6). This descent of the Holy Spirit makes Jesus of Nazareth into the Anointed One of God, Jesus the Christ. It’s sort of a mirror image of that marvelous scene when Samuel “anointed David…and from that day on, the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David” (1 Sam 16:13). David is anointed, and the Spirit comes mightily upon him. The Spirit comes upon Jesus, who proceeds to do mighty deeds; evidently he’s been anointed, tho not with physical oil.
St. Cyril of Alexandria, a 5th-century Father of the Church who championed the orthodox doctrine that Christ possesses a fully human nature and a fully divine nature within one divine Person, writes: “The whole of our nature is present in Christ, insofar as he is man. So the Father can be said to give the Spirit again to the Son, though the Son possesses the Spirit as his own, in order that we may receive the Spirit in Christ. . . . He receives it to renew our nature in its entirety and to make it whole again….”[1] When the Spirit anoints Jesus, the Spirit anoints humanity at the same time.
So, this feast of the Lord’s baptism in the Jordan is a feast of the Lord’s anointing, and this feast celebrates a divine mystery in which our humanity is consecrated by sharing in Jesus’ consecration. That consecration is effected individually when we are baptized and anointed with chrism—baptized into Jesus the Anointed One, baptized into the entire mystery of his Person, baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire by being baptized in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, becoming, like Jesus of Nazareth, beloved daughters and sons of the Father.
Another aspect of this divine mystery is beautifully expressed in one of the
homilies of St. Maximus, bishop of Turin in the 5th century, whose statue Don Bosco set on the right side of the façade of the basilica of Mary Help of Christians, opposite a statue of St. Francis de Sales: “Christ is baptized, not to be made holy by the water, but to make the water holy, and by his cleansing to purify the waters which he touched…. When the Savior is washed, all water for our baptism is made clean, purified at its source for the dispensing of baptismal grace to the people of future ages.”[2] Christ, consecrated by the Holy Spirit, also consecrates water so that water, in turn, is empowered to consecrate Christians: Christians are born again of water and Spirit (John 3:5).Thus we celebrate today what our Lord Jesus has done for us with water, cleansing us and making us new, sharing with us the Spirit that he received, making us sons and daughters of his Father. Our opening prayer was that God would keep us, his children born of water and the Spirit, faithful to our calling; i.e., our calling to be his children, to be like Christ his eternal Son.
St. Paul defines such a life in very general terms: “rejecting godless ways and worldly desires, living temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age,” being “eager to do what is good,” until Christ returns and we’re fully united with him in the age to come (Tit 2:12,14). Each of us has to examine himself, asking what needs to be rejected, how better to practice temperance, justice, and devotion, where to do what is good. For, surely, we long to be more fully Christian, more fully like Christ, the Beloved Son.
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