January: Day 6: Teaching 1: The Baptism of the Lord

January: Day 6: Teaching 1:
The Baptism of the Lord
 
(Edifying Lessons From the Event of the Baptism of the Lord:
a. One Should Not Be Ashamed of Labor and Obscurity;
b. The Necessity of Baptism)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Having come to earth for the salvation of the human race and for the proclamation of the truth to it, the Lord Jesus Christ did not begin His public preaching until He was thirty years old, because among the Jews at that time, no one could act as a public teacher and priest before this age. As a simple, ordinary man, He lived with His Mother in Nazareth, in the house of His supposed father Joseph the woodworker, sharing with him his labors. Christ, the Son of God, remained so long in obscurity by the order of Providence, so that the people, by hearing of His birth, would be better prepared to receive Him, and He Himself, Christ, would grow into the fullness of wisdom and grace. When He was thirty years old and the time of His divine appearance to people was approaching, the word of God came to John, the son of Zecheriah, in the desert (Luke 3:2), commanding him to go to the Jordan and baptize the people with water, and also showing him a sign by which he could recognize the Messiah/Christ. And so, the Forerunner goes out to the Jordan, preaches to everyone the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, says that the Kingdom of God is near, the time of the Messiah has come. Everyone rushed to the Jordan to confess their sins and received baptism from John. Among the people going to John to be baptized, Jesus Christ also comes. Although He, being sinless, had no need of such baptism, He goes with the others to John, demands baptism and accepts it in order to show people by His example the need for repentance and cleansing from sins, and at the same time, by the touch of His most pure body, to sanctify the watery nature and give it the gift and power as an external means and mysterious renewal of believers in the Mystery of Baptism, which the Lord established in His New Testament Church. At the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ, a great, extraordinary phenomenon occurred: when He, having been baptized, came out of the water, the heavens opened and John saw the Spirit of God, Who descended like a dove upon Christ, and a voice was heard from heaven of God the Father: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17).

II. Here, brethren, is a brief history of the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. How much is edifying and instructive in it!

a) Our Lord Jesus Christ, according to tradition, from His youth until His baptism, was engaged in woodworking with Joseph, His supposed father, or more accurately, tutor, and thus acquired food for Himself by the labor of His hands. Who, after this, should not be ashamed and tormented by his conscience, living at the expense of others, indulging in laziness and vices, or considering simple and so-called menial labor humiliating for himself?

b) Furthermore, the Lord Jesus Christ spends most of His earthly life in obscurity, engaged in the most ordinary everyday affairs. Who after this can grumble about the smallness of his lot, complain about his fate? Who is not ashamed, recognizing in himself some abilities, to complain that he cannot reveal all his good aspirations? The Lord Jesus Christ by His example taught us to submit to the guidance of God's Providence.

c) Being holy and sinless, He was nevertheless baptized in order to show the need of baptism. Having established the Mystery of Baptism and sanctified it by His own example, He thereby opened for us the door to the heavenly kingdom and eternal blessedness, for baptism, in the words of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, “is the death of sin, the rebirth of the soul, a garment of light, a chariot to heaven, the delight of Paradise, a welcome into the kingdom, the gift of adoption” (Instruction, Ch. 16). And indeed, by our baptism the heavens, which until then had been completely closed to us, are opened, and the Holy Spirit, although not in the form of a dove, but invisibly, nevertheless descended upon us; and although the voice of the heavenly Father was not heard from heaven, nevertheless, from the time of our baptism, our Heavenly Father prepared us for Himself, and we, from children of wrath, became children of God (Eph. 5:8).

d) Finally, by celebrating the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the Holy Church first of all affirms our faith in the highest and incomprehensible dogma of the Holy Trinity, clearly revealed only in the New Testament, and by this indicates to us that in the matter of our salvation all persons of the Holy Trinity have taken and continue to take the most lively and active part.

III. You see, brethren, how much that is edifying and comforting the Holy Church teaches us in the event we celebrate! We are a creature that has offended and continues to offend its Creator and Lord with grave sins, a creature that deserves nothing but punishment, and yet we are given grace in baptism that cleanses us from the filth of sin, frees us from responsibility for them and adopts us as sons of the Heavenly Father. Having received baptism, we were reborn by water and the Spirit and became sons and heirs of the Kingdom of God. But, brethren, in order to be fully sons and heirs of the Kingdom of God, we must not only receive Holy Baptism, be born of water and the Spirit, but also be clothed, according to the word of the Apostle, in Christ, that is, live the life of Christ. 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.