The priest Eugenio Bujalance offers this article on the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord, a feast that ends the time of Christmas.
With the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, we put an end to the mystery of Christmas. After the manifestation of his love, his identity is revealed to us, through which we know what God wants from each one of us. The humanity that Jesus takes, he does so that you can take on the divine condition. He has become man so that you can become a child of God. Ultimately, the Baptism of Jesus comes to explain the meaning of his birth, he is born so that you may be reborn.
The difference between John the Baptist and Jesus is essential. In John, there is a man who seeks God, who wants to get closer to Him and know Him better. However, Jesus is God, and it is God himself who makes the effort to get closer to us, that is why John says “I baptize you with water, but He with the Holy Spirit and fire.” There are differences between one Baptism and another. It is not the water that purifies Jesus, but it is Jesus who gives the power to the water to purify.
Tertullian says that Christ is never without water, because that water is the Church, which becomes a mother, and gives birth to her children through the sacrament.
Saint John Paul II introduced the luminous mysteries into the rosary. The first of these is the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. Why is the Baptism of Jesus luminous?
Benedict XVI in the book “Jesus of Nazareth” says that sometimes we have interpreted that Jesus, at the moment of his Baptism, is illuminated by his divine filiation. But this is not entirely true. He already knew what his mission was and who he was. In fact, at the age of 12, he got lost in the temple and answered Joseph and Mary, “Do you not know that I had to be in the affairs of my Father?” He has always known that he is the Son of God.
What happens in the Jordan is light for us. The beauty of the sacraments is to participate in the filiation of Jesus Christ, to be children in the Son.
I can participate in what Jesus is, in what he has with his Father, thanks to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.
I knew an old lady who prayed every day, “God is my Father, how happy I am, I am his son, I am a son of God.” We cannot wait any longer, because our happiness is knowing that we are a son of God. That is my happiness. Problems will come later, but no one can take away from me the fact that I am a son of God. Perhaps if we had the opportunity, we would ask Jesus, but how are you going to get baptized? How are you going to put yourself in the line of sinners? It is humility. Normally, we tend to think, I am different, I am not like the others, I have to have a separate path, or as they say, the bride at the wedding, the child at the baptism and the dead at the funeral, it is typical of our sin to feel unique.
The Jordan River is less than 430 meters below sea level. Jesus goes down to the lowest part of the earth, because he wants to go down to the lowest part of you, your poverty, your misery. He wanted to love, and he did not know what he wanted to love, that is the feeling that sin leaves us with.
Let us recover the grace of Baptism, when we confess, and we will meet the One who was seeking our soul.
