Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Theophany: The Baptism of the Lord, What Does it Mean?

By Deacon Keith A Fournier
1/9/2010

Catholic Online (http://www.catholic.org/)

His public mission continues through His Church, of which we are made members through Baptism into Him.


In the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, the clergy often lead the faithful to rivers and entire rivers are blessed!

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - In the Western Church we end the Christmas season with the Feast of the Lord’s “Baptism in the Jordan”. It marks the beginning of what is called his “public” ministry. 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) They 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.

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 (to use a favored word of the great Bishop Irenaeus) the entire human experience, recreating 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 mothers 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.
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See also:

St Proclus: The Waters are Made Holy

St Gregory Nazianzen: Baptism of Christ

Reflection: Becoming Prayer

posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 6:35 PM