The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Monday, January 9, 2023

Matthew 3, 13–17

Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. John tried to prevent him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” Jesus said to him in reply, “Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed him. After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The Lord Jesus worked patiently in Nazareth for many years before he went to be baptized by John.  We do not know how long John had been baptizing before the Lord came to him but he seems to have become well-known on the Jordan so that people were coming to him from all directions.  John had many disciples too by this time, as we learn from St. John’s Gospel.  Jesus was about thirty years old when he left his home town.  He might have gone to John the Baptist sooner, years sooner, but he chose this particular moment to do so.  You and I might want the Lord to hurry along in answering our prayers but he acts at the proper moment, not at the one we think best.  Not least among his reasons for choosing the moment he did had to do with who would be present.  He wanted John and Andrew, his future Apostles, to be there when he was baptized.  Perhaps they had only lately joined John’s fellowship.  But it was not his will to appear before John at the time the Jewish leaders and the Pharisees were interrogating him.  When Jesus came from Nazareth, his Mother remained behind in the care of her relatives, perhaps living with her sister (alternatively, her step-sister or sister-in-law) also named Mary.  And he left Nazareth not to return to it again but once, and that in over a year’s time.

“John tried to prevent him.”  The Greek says, “John hindered him.”  The picture we should have is of the soaking wet John the Baptist with his rude clothing sticking to his skin seeing Jesus coming towards him on the grassy shore.  John, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, rushed out of the water, making a big spectacle, and put his hands out so that Jesus could go no farther.  They looked into each other’s eyes: the Prophet and the One about whom he had prophesied.  No Prophet of the Old Testament had been accorded a moment such as this.  “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?”  The Holy Spirit had not let John know that the Son of God was going to seek baptism.  Perhaps the knowledge ahead of time would have proved too much for John, as we recall that the words of the angel has proven too much for his father Zechariah.  Indeed, it overwhelms the mind that the mighty God, the Creator of all things who sustains all things in existence, would come as though a sinner to the water.  

“Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”  When the Lord fulfilled the Law, it was as though he completed the sentences in the Law: “Do not kill”, to which he added, in the Sermon on the Mount, “or rage or wish to harm or kill”.  The Lord fulfills “all righteousness” here by entering the water — and giving it the power to accomplish its true purpose: to wash away sin.  The water we drink in order to live physically thus is able to be used to give life spiritually.  The Lord gives water this capability by entering himself.  He “washes” the water with his grace.  “After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water.”  The Greek text says that he came out of the water “immediately”: he had come to confer grace, which occurred instantaneously, and at that point he had no need to be in the water.  He did not linger to confess sins as others had done.  He did what he came to do and was ready for what would come next.  Jesus did not waste a moment.

“Behold, the heavens were opened for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him.”  It is hard to imagine what the opened heavens must have looked like.  We might try to think of the blue sky parting overhead and the bright glory of God pouring into the world.  The Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, descended upon him.  John the Baptist, if no one else, saw the dove, and would have understood.  Then the Father spoke: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”  John must have heard this as well, for, as Matthew tells it, these words were not addressed to Jesus but to someone else.

We ask God, on this Feast, to grant us the grace to live as his children in imitation of his Son.