Wednesday 31st May 2023

Home » Frontpage »Uncategorized » Currently Reading:

The Baptism in the Jordan: The Theophany. Why Was Jesus Baptized?

January 9, 2020 Frontpage, Uncategorized No Comments

ByImage result for baptism of jesus stained glass Deacon Keith Fournier

 

In the Catholic Church we end the Christmas season this Sunday with the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism in the Jordan. Some of the most beautiful readings in the Office of Readings are found in the Liturgy of the Hours, the official prayer of the whole church, on the days between the Feast of the Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord.

The Liturgy of the Hours is also called the Breviary. It is the sort of baseline prayer of all Clergy, Bishops, Priests and deacons, as well as those in the consecrated life. However, since the last great Church Council, Vatican II this official Prayer of the Church is recommended for all Christians – and understandably so. Once one discovers the Office of Readings it becomes the first place, after the Sacred Scripture, to go for inspiration and food for life’s journey!

These readings touch upon the deeper meaning of both of these feasts by touching the mystery of what actually occurred. Here are a few sentences from an ancient homily given by the Bishop of Constantinople, St. Proclus, as an example:

At Christmas we saw a weak baby, giving proof of our weakness. In today’s feast, we see a perfect man, hinting at the perfect Son who proceeds from the all-perfect Father. At Christmas the King puts on the royal robe of his body; at Epiphany the very source enfolds, and, as it were, clothes the river. Come then and see new and astounding miracles: the Sun of righteousness washing in the Jordan, fire immersed in water, God sanctified by the ministry of man.

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord marks the beginning of what is called the public ministry of Jesus. He was thirty years old. He died His redemptive death at Golgotha when He was only thirty three. However, He also spent thirty redemptive years of life in what writers have sometimes called His hidden years in Nazareth’s school, “growing in wisdom and stature”. (Luke 2:52)

Those years were not hidden in the sense of unimportant. It simply means that we do not find much about them in the Gospel accounts. However, they are rich with meaning, revealing the deeper truths of our faith and its invitation to each one of us who bear the name Christian to live our lives now in a new way by living them in Him. .

Jesus, Perfect God and Perfect Man, the Incarnate Word, Son of God and Son of Mary, gave the same glory to the Father when he was working with wood in the workshop of Nazareth as he would years later when he raised a friend named Lazarus from the dead. From the moment of His conception, the Son of God recapitulated (a favored word of the great Church father, Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons) the entire human experience, re-creating and beginning humanity anew.

During those years, in the hearth of a human family the Son of God sanctified and transformed every aspect of ordinary human life. His redemptive and transforming work began in the first home of the whole human race, His mother’s womb. Jesus was a Redeemer in the Womb, beginning His Incarnation as an Embryonic Person, to use the phrase from the Instruction from the Holy See entitled “On the Dignity of every Human Person”. From within the Living tabernacle of the Womb of the All Holy Virgin, He began His redemptive mission.

This child of Mary’s was born and heaven touched earth. We commemorated that Holy Nativity just days ago. Some of our brethren in the Eastern Church commemorated it last week. At the breast of his mother, He elevated the already holy wonder and dignity of the vocation of motherhood. In His sacred humanity he was nurtured, a sign of the beauty of the human experience of love, growth and maturation.

He was raised by a human mother and father; and parenting and family life forever took on a deeper meaning in the domestic church of the family. At the bench of Joseph the carpenter; he learned the carpenter’s trade and sanctified all human work as a participation in the continuing work of both creation and redemption.

The word Epiphany means a manifestation, a making present, a revealing. There is no doubt that even during those so called “hidden” years the plan, purpose and redemptive implications of the entire saving life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were being manifested and revealed. They reveal how the ordinary becomes extraordinary when lived in communion with the Father.

The Baptism of the Lord is also called the Theophany, in the Eastern Christian churches, Catholic and Orthodox. It is the manifestation of the fullness of God. Our Gospel at the Liturgy recounts the wondrous revealing of the Holy Trinity. As the Incarnate Word of the Father was immersed in the Waters, the voice of the Father is heard and the Holy Spirit descends. (Luke 3) The Trinity is revealed.

The Theophany has inspired extraordinary reflection in the Tradition. Here is an excerpt from an early homily:

“Therefore the Lord Jesus came to baptism, and willed to have his body washed with water. Perhaps someone will say: “He who is holy, why did he wish to be baptized?” Pay attention therefore! Christ is baptized, not that he may be sanctified in the waters, but that he himself may sanctify the waters, and by his own purification may purify those streams which he touches”.

“For the consecration of Christ is the greater consecration of another element. For when the Savior is washed, then already for our baptism all water is cleansed and the fount purified, that the grace of the laver may be administered to the peoples that come after. Christ therefore takes the lead in baptism, so that Christian peoples may follow after him with confidence. (St. Maximus of Turin, 423 AD)

Last week we reflected on the wise men from the East who followed the light to the fullness of Divinity who humbled Himself to share in our humanity. This Sunday, the church points to this Manifestation in the river of Jordan, this Epiphany in the waters, as the event wherein the full plan of God for His Church and the entire creation was manifested or revealed. We are called to become a manifestation, an Epiphany of God in a world stumbling along in the darkness of sin. That is what we celebrate today.

The Baptism of Jesus manifests the very life of the Holy Trinity to the whole world and opens the door, through Jesus Christ, into a communion, a participation in the life of the Trinity through Baptism into His Body, the Church. The waters of the Jordan are sanctified by the Son and now all water is sanctified. Just as the Spirit hovered over the waters of the original creation, the Spirit hovers over the waters where the Son is immersed by John. This is the reason why in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, the clergy often lead the faithful to rivers and entire rivers are blessed!

One of the first elements of creation – created by the Father through the Son – is now re-created through the Incarnate Son, and becomes the matter of the Sacrament of New Life for all men and women. The Word Incarnate stands in the waters of the very earth which was created through Him, and begins the re-creation. Into these waters, through which the people of Israel were once delivered, the entire human race is now invited to follow Jesus. What was once the means of God’s judgment and purification at the time of Noah, now fills the Baptismal fount where men and women are delivered from sin and made new!

The Church is given new waters for her saving and sanctifying mission. The Trinity, the Communion of Divine persons in perfect unity, is revealed. In the great liturgical prayer of the East the Church proclaims: “When Thou, O Lord was baptized in the Jordan, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest… O Christ our God who has appeared and enlightened the world, Glory to Thee.” In his baptism in the Jordan, Jesus is not sanctified for He is without sin, we are capacitated now in Him to become “sons (and daughters) in the Son”.

The Theophany also reminds us that all of creation will be redeemed! As Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome, creation itself groans for that full redemption (Romans 8:28). This belief in the full redemption of creation, of a new heaven and a new earth, is integral to the Christian faith. Christians are NOT anti-matter. We profess in our ancient creed that we will await the resurrection of our bodies and life in a world to come.

The Feast of the Theophany, the Baptism in the Jordan celebrates the full salvation and sanctification of all matter as well. The Greek word for Baptism means to be immersed. Before it is all over, the entire world will be immersed in God and transformed. It will be freed from sin and made new! That is why in the Eastern Christian churches, Orthodox and Catholic, priests in areas close to bodies of water lead a procession to them and bless them. All waters have become holy now because the Son has been immersed in them. They are used for the new birth of Baptism.

Descending into the waters of the Jordan, Jesus, who shares our humanity, makes that living water flow with healing mercy. His Divine Life is now mediated through the Sacraments in the life of the Church which is His Body. The Word descends and begins the re-creation of the universe. This is an ongoing work which will only be complete when He returns. We who are baptized into Him are called to participate in this ongoing redemptive mission. The public mission and ministry of Jesus began at the waters of Jordan. However, it continues through His Church, of which we are made members through Baptism.

The Christian vocation, no matter what our state in life, job, or specific response to God’s call, is to reveal the Love of the Trinity to the entire human race, to bring them to the Waters of Baptism in order to encounter the Lord and experience New Life and be incorporated into the new humanity of the Church, which is the Body of Christ. There, joined in Him and with one another, we are called to participate in His ongoing redemptive mission until He returns to make all things new. We are invited on this Feast to grasp ever more deeply the heart of the Christian life and to choose to live our lives in the Lord, by living in the heart of the Church for the sake of the world.

—–

Deacon Keith A. Fournier is the Dean of Catholic Online School and Chaplain of Your Catholic Voice Foundation. He currently serves the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, under Bishop Strickland, as General Legal Counsel, Director of Deacon Formation and Dean of Catholic Identity at the Bishop Gorman Catholic School. He and his wife Laurine have five grown children and seven grandchildren, He is also a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the nineteen nineties. He holds his undergraduate (B.A.) and two Masters Degrees in Sacred Theology (M.T.S and M.Phil.) and is  pursuing a Th.D. in Moral Theology.

 

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Twitter Feed

Unable to load Tweets

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

Pontifical Academy for Life president calls medically assisted suicide ‘feasible’

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 23, 2023 / 15:02 pm Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has spoken in support of legalized medically assisted suicide, calling it “feasible” despite the clear teachings of the Catholic Church against it. “Personally, I would not practice suicide assistance, but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions

Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Lower Court Ruling Banning Mail-Order Abortions

The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a lower court ruling banning mail-order abortions and putting safety measures in place to protect women who are currently being injured at high rates by the abortion pill. The high court made the decision to allow but sides in the legal battle the chance to provide additional information and to allow it to more fully consider the case next week. Also, another federa judge issued a contrasting ruling that…Continue Reading

A Call to Action for Parents . . . Minnesotans Wake UP! The Insanity in This State Continues!

">Cardinals Burke . . . SAME-SEX UNION BLESSINGS?

Longtime teacher fired after discussing God in classroom, challenging ‘evil’ LGBT school policy

(LifeSiteNews) — A longtime public school teacher in Idaho was let go earlier this month for being unafraid to mention God in the classroom and voicing his objections to a pro-LGBT policy designed to promote “transgender” ideologies among young people.  Ian O’Connell, a Catholic teacher who served as a substitute in the public institutions of Caldwell School District for over 20 years, spoke on February 13 about a proposed “gender identity and sexual orientation” policy that…Continue Reading

San Quentin Prison And School Choice

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY When I was a boy, I spent some time inside San Quentin State Prison and got to know a few of the inmates there.The San Rafael Little League played its games in that prison and a group of inmates known as “trustees” umpired them.The grounds of San Quentin were considerably larger…Continue Reading

Stumbling Toward Heaven?… Will Biden Repent Of His Evils Before A Serious Fall Could Harm Him?

By DEXTER DUGGAN Does Joe Biden understand the generosity that God continues to extend to him and his allies who keep trying to drag nations into degeneracy and death?Even though Catholics have come to expect the promotion of awful immorality by some of the U.S.’s most powerful reputedly Catholic politicians — all of them left-wing…Continue Reading

As His Cause Moves Forward… Joseph Dutton’s 180th Birthday Celebrated

By PEGGY MOEN Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu was invited to Stowe, Vt., to help celebrate the 180th birthday of Joseph Dutton, according to a report in The Hawaii Catholic Herald by Patrick Downes, editor. If canonized, Dutton will be the third saint honored for service at the Hansen’s disease settlement in Kalaupapa, Molokai, the…Continue Reading

Dolly Parton And God… “My Faith Impacts Everything I Do”

By BARBARA SIMPSON Anyone who has paid any attention at all to show business and the people in it knows that religion often has no visible place in their work. If they practice any religious beliefs in their lives, they tend to keep the details to themselves.There is a good reason for that. Generally, people…Continue Reading

Release The Manifesto

By JOSH HAMMER On March 27, a transgender lunatic named Audrey Hale shot up a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tenn. The shooter, who tragically killed three adults and three children before being neutralized by well-trained Metropolitan Nashville Police Department officers, was a 28-year-old biological female who had “transitioned” to a public-facing male “gender…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Pondering A Forgotten Virtue: Vengeance

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Pope posted this commentary May 22 on his website, and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + Most of us think that vengeance is merely a vice. And, given improper intentions, or excess or misguided application, it can indeed be a sin and a vice. However, as we read in Scripture, “Vengeance…Continue Reading

Minnesota Legislature Repeals . . . Protection For Born-Alive Infants, Support For Pregnant Women

ST. PAUL — The Minnesota legislature on May 22 approved an Omnibus health bill that repeals a bipartisan measure protecting newborns and a bipartisan program supporting pregnant women who want to carry their babies to term. It also rescinds a number of longstanding laws surrounding abortion. As of this writing, Gov. Tim Walz was expected to sign the wide-ranging bill,…Continue Reading

A Mystery To Ponder For All Eternity

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Solemnity Of The Most Holy Trinity (YR A) Readings: Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-92 Cor. 13:11-13John 3:16-18 In the readings today, we hear about several attributes of God: grace, mercy, kind, faithful, slow to anger, fellowship, love, and peace. It is also important to note that whenever God is spoken of, it is clear that there is only…Continue Reading

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: This series on the Bible is from the book Catholicism & Scripture. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. See postal and email addresses at the bottom of this column. Special Course On Catholicism And Scripture (Chapter 20) After three years…Continue Reading

A Leaven In The World… On Your Wedding Day

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK On this splendid day, for which you have waited with joyful anticipation, you are surrounded by many of those you love, and who love you: family and friends. We share your joy to see this moment, when your love for one another will begin a new and deeper reality: the ultimate sharing. The uniting of…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)