Acts
19:1-8; John 1:29-34
In this season we celebrate
the great feast of Theophany, of Christ’s baptism by St. John the Forerunner when
the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit
descended upon Him in the form of a dove. Epiphany reveals that the Savior Who
appears from the waters of the Jordan to illumine our world of darkness is truly
the God-Man, a Person of the Holy Trinity. He is baptized to restore us,
and the creation itself, to the ancient glory for which we were created.
By entering into
the water, the Lord made it holy, which means that He restored and fulfilled
its very nature. We need water in order
to live. The earth needs water in order
to become fertile, bearing fruit and giving life to animals of all kinds. We wash with water and use it to maintain
cleanliness and health. Without water,
we become weak and die, as do other creatures.
And in the world as we know it, water can kill us through floods and
storms. Since the creation has been subjected to futility through the sin of
human beings, the very water through which God gives us life may become the
means of our death. But when water is blessed, God restores it to its natural
state, to its place in fulfilling God’s purposes for the flourishing of the
creation in holiness. And since our
homes are where we and our families live each day, how could we not want His blessing
on our marriages, our children, and the physical space where we offer our lives
to the Lord? When we bless our homes, we
join what is most important to us to Christ’s healing and restoration of the entire
universe. We find strength to make our daily lives a liturgy, an entrance into
the Kingdom of Heaven, which is the natural state of those who bear the image
and likeness of God.
Tragically, our
first parents turned away from their high calling and ushered in the unnatural realm
of corruption that we know all too well, both in the brokenness of our hearts
and in our relationships with one another.
God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin when they left paradise after
disregarding Him. Through their disobedience, they had become aware that
they were naked and were cast into the world as we know it. Their
nakedness showed that they had repudiated their vocation to become like God in
holiness. Having stripped themselves of their original glory, they were
reduced to mortal flesh and destined for slavery to their passions and to the
grave. Because of them, the creation itself was “subjected to
futility…” (Rom. 8:20)
As we prepared for
Theophany, we heard this hymn: “Make ready, O Zebulon, and prepare, O
Nephtali, and you, River Jordan, cease your flow and receive with joy the
Master coming to be baptized. And you, Adam, rejoice with the first mother, and
hide not yourselves as you did of old in paradise; for having seen you naked,
He appeared to clothe you with the first robe. Yea, Christ has appeared
desiring to renew the whole creation.” If it seems strange to think
of Christ being baptized in order to clothe Adam and Eve, remember St. Paul’s
teaching that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on
Christ.” (Gal. 3:27) In baptism,
Jesus Christ clothes us with a garment of light, restoring us to our original
vocation to become like Him in holiness. He delivers us from the nakedness and vulnerability of slavery
to our own passions and to the fear of the grave. Through His and our
baptism, He makes us participants in His restoration and fulfillment of the
human person. He is baptized in order to save Adam and Eve, all their descendants,
and the entire creation, fulfilling the glorious purposes for which He brought
us all into existence.
Life after baptism
is not, however, without pain, disease, death, and other sorrows. In
contrast with the divine glory of the appearance of our Lord, the darkness of
sin within us and our world of corruption becomes all the more apparent. In the aftermath of Christ’s birth, Herod the
Great had all the young boys in the region of Bethlehem murdered. St. John the
Forerunner, who prepared the way for “the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin
of the world,” was arrested by Herod Antipas for prophetically denouncing the
king’s immorality. After the one who
baptized Him was arrested, the Lord went to “Galilee of the Gentiles” to begin
His public ministry in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that “’the people who
sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region
and shadow of death light has dawned.’” (Matt. 4:15-16)
We are baptized
into Christ’s death in order to rise up with Him into a life of holiness in
which we regain the robe of light rejected by our first parents. In every
aspect of our darkened lives, He calls us to become radiant with the divine
glory He shares with us as the New Adam.
In order to do so, we must find healing for the passions that have taken
root in our hearts and have distorted our relationships even with those we love
most. In how we treat everyone from
those closest to us to complete strangers, we must find healing from the
corruptions of pride, hatred, anger, resentment, and the desire to dominate
others. It does not matter whether we
are at home, work, school, or other settings, or whether we think we are in private
or in public. If we have put on Christ in baptism, we must become living icons
of Christ’s salvation and mercy to all we encounter.
We must also be on
guard for all the ways in which we remain inhabitants of “the region and shadow
of death.” Because the Savior has
hallowed the water and the entire creation through His baptism, absolutely
nothing is intrinsically evil or profane.
No dimension of God’s good creation requires us to return to the
nakedness of passion in any way. We are
without excuse for doing so, for Theophany reveals that we are always on holy
ground and must speak, act, and think as those who wear a garment of light. Though we fall short of meeting the goal each
day, we must always strive to manifest our Lord’s healing of the human person
in every thought, word, and deed. We
must become like holy water restored to its natural place and blessing the
world as a sign of its salvation.
If
we are to discern how to fulfill our vocation to bear witness to our Lord in
the midst of a world still enslaved to the fear of death, we must embrace the
full meaning of our baptism. That requires
constant vigilance against allowing self-centered desire to creep unnoticed into
our hearts and distort our vision of ourselves, our neighbors, and our
world. That requires turning the other
cheek, going the extra mile, and treating others as we would have them treat us,
especially when we think we are justified in responding in kind to those who
have wronged us. That requires turning
away from whatever fuels our passions so that the desires of our hearts are
purified and directed toward their true fulfillment in God. As we celebrate Theophany in “the region and
shadow of death,” let us focus mindfully on living each day as those who have
died to sin and risen up into a life holiness.
That is how we may become brilliant living epiphanies of the salvation
of the world as we wear the robe of light that Christ has restored to Adam and
Eve, for He is baptized to do nothing less than “to renew the whole creation.”
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