Oh! That You Would Rend the Heavens and Come Down!
By Br. Maximilian Mary Anderson, O.S.B.
Though he was sinless, Christ sought out John’s baptism of repentance. There’s a lesson for us about God’s love of mankind in that act of humility.
This article was originally published in our January 2025 Kansas Monks newsletter. Read the whole newsletter at www.kansasmonks.org/newsletter/january2025
Love makes one do crazy things. Whether to win the affection of the beloved or merely to give proofs of one’s own affection, the lover may do that which to others seems borderline ridiculous, even downright humiliating. Nowhere is this truer than in the life of Christ.
Every mystery of the life of Jesus Christ reveals his love for us, one and all.
The baptism of Christ in the Jordan is no different: it testifies to the vastness of his love and his desire for our salvation. Here, his love manifests itself in a curious and almost disconcerting humility. Through an anointing of the Holy Spirit, heights of glory open up for us that were thitherto utterly closed off. These two keys, humility and the Spirit, offer a way to look more deeply into this mystery and see how God is moving through it to effect our redemption and sanctification out of a limitless love for us.
John’s protest when Jesus approaches him for baptism is more than valid: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Mt 3:14). John knows who he is and that he has no need to repent of his sin and be baptized. Yet in this profound act of humility, Jesus chooses to put himself among the sinners waiting to be baptized.
There is a duality of both fulfillment and foreshadowing here: Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant comes to mind, especially since the waters of baptism symbolize death to oneself, to one’s former way. “He was numbered with the transgressors” (Is 53:12). Jesus refers to baptism again later in his ministry, especially while rebuking the brothers James and John, but he refers to his baptism as something yet to occur, not as something already accomplished by the Baptist in the Jordan. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:38). This refers to his imminent Passion and Death on the Cross. Here then are the lengths to which he is willing to go out of love for us. Jesus insists on his baptism by John “to fulfill all righteousness.” What is this righteousness? The Father’s will—and his Father’s will is that the sinner not die, but repent and live. How is this repentance possible for us?
Giotto. The Baptism of the Christ. 1305, fresco. Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel, Padua, Italy
The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Love so intense between the Father and the Son that he is the third person of the Trinity, descends upon Jesus at this moment of his baptism by John. This anointing by the Spirit is another great mystery, for the Son of God from all eternity cannot be said to have been apart from the Holy Spirit. This is something that does happen to Jesus, the God-Man, in history though. It does not change any of the things that have always been true about the eternally begotten Son of the Father or his relationship with the Father, but it does have a huge impact on us and our relationship with the Trinity. Heaven, being closed to us after the Fall of Adam and Eve, is opened again and the Spirit comes down to humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. He is anointed for his messianic mission and, in the hearing of everyone there, is told by his Father, “Thou art my beloved son; with thee I am well pleased” (Lk 3:22).
We are members of Christ’s body, the Church, by virtue of our baptism. What Jesus, the bridegroom, accomplishesas a man in history unfolds throughout history in the members of the Church, his bride. The words of the Father are also spoken to us because Jesus comes to dwell in us and we in him. The waters of baptism, now sanctified by the sacred humanity of Jesus, are for us not just a death, but a participation also in Jesus’s resurrection. Jesus goes to the depths for us, to pursue us and give us what we cannot give ourselves: the grace that’s needed to enjoy communion with him and his Father, the joy of Trinitarian life and love dwelling in our hearts. John could not have foreseen all this before it happened; if he could have, I doubt he would have tried to prevent Jesus’s baptism.
Jesus’s love for us is manifested nowhere more powerfully than on the Cross. Everything else in his life becomes distorted if not read in light of that. His manifestation, his epiphany here in his baptism only makes sense when considered within the context of his mission of love he received from the Father: to save us, to redeem us. At his baptism, he debases himself out of love for us in order to be anointed by the Holy Spirit in his humanity to anoint us to whom and for whom he gives himself. Let us remember that “he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). Because we in no way deserve this, it seems just plain crazy… but that’s love for you.
About Br. Maximilian Mary Anderson, OSB
Br. Maximilian Mary, O.S.B. is a former FOCUS missionary (and current monk). He recently became vocations director for the Abbey.