Baptism of Our Lord
First Luminous Mystery
The Baptism of Christ
He Descends to the Lowest Place to Raise Us Up
The mystery of the Baptism of Jesus sanctifies an Old Testament action, and out of it Christ institutes the sacrament by which one enters the Body of Christ, the Church. John's baptism was a baptism of repentance only; Christ does not merely improve it but gives something new in kind, the sacrament that regenerates and washes away sin. His baptism and ours are not John's baptism intensified; they are a different thing altogether.
There are three kinds of baptism: Baptism of Desire (one who longs for it but dies before receiving it), Baptism of Blood (martyrdom), and sacramental Baptism by Water. The Apostles, led by St. Peter, are held to have baptized the three thousand after the Pentecost sermon in the Acts of the Apostles.
To understand this mystery, go to the geography. The Jordan, where Christ was baptized, runs through the lowest dry land on the face of the earth, the great rift that sinks toward the Dead Sea. Of all the places He could have chosen, God comes down to the very bottom of the world to be baptized. That descent is the whole meaning.
He is baptized, and He raises us, by coming down to us at the lowest point of the land, in the Jordan.
It is the place where Joshua led Israel across the water into the Promised Land, Joshua whose name is Yeshua, Jesus, leading the people through the water into their inheritance.
It is the place John the Baptist brought the repentant, down to the lowest ground to be washed, so that God might raise them up.
Christ goes lower still. He who had no sin steps into the water meant for sinners, so that from the bottom of the world He may lift the whole world with Him. He descends that we might rise; He is buried in the water that we might walk in newness of life.
A note on King David: David's uniting of the kingdom and bringing up of the Ark belong to Jerusalem on the heights, not to the Jordan. The Jordan does mark his descent and restoration, when he crossed it fleeing Absalom and crossed back to be restored to his throne (2 Samuel 17-19), the same pattern of going down to the low place and being raised.
Baptism is prefigured in the Old Testament in four ways, as the Catechism teaches (CCC 1217-1222). In Baptism we are ever bound to profess the Faith and observe the Law of Christ and His Church (St. Pius X Catechism, Baptism Q18).
In His Baptism, Christ submitted to the baptism of John, a baptism for sinners to repent, in order to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3:15). This gesture is a manifestation of His self-emptying (Philippians 2:7).
And it is in the baptism not of John but of Jesus, the glorified and fulfilled baptism given "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," that we too empty ourselves. We die to self and are raised in Christ. The waters make us whole and wash away the stain of original and actual sin.
The fruit of this mystery is openness to the Holy Ghost. In Baptism we are made open to the Spirit, just as Jesus showed us at the Jordan. This openness is the right disposition toward God and a necessary one to keep, that we may remain in His grace and follow Him in all things.
Pray each verse, then the Ave Maria, letting the Gospel of the Baptism carry the decade.
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