Christ Is Baptized!
Today we celebrate a truly beautiful and great feast—the Feast of the Theophany of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In today’s Gospel, we heard about this very event, when Jesus Christ comes to John the Forerunner, the Baptist, in order to receive baptism from him in the waters of the Jordan. The mission and task entrusted to John the Baptist were to prepare the people for the coming of the Son of God into this world.
We know that in the Old Testament there were prophets. Very often, the prophets of the Old Testament proclaimed God’s word and foretold the future — what awaited the people. When the people, in their way of life, drifted away from God or began to act wrongly, the task of the prophets was to call them back to repentance.
The mission and task of John the Baptist, however, were different. It was not so much to speak about the future, but rather to proclaim to the people: “Behold, among you stands the One whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”
"The time has come — repent and turn back, for Christ, the Messiah and Savior, is among you." When people heard these words, they were likely frightened, astonished, and troubled, yet at the same time filled with great joy, because they understood that the Lord does not abandon humanity but remains close to us. He comes to the human person in order to be with us.
If we look to the Old Testament, to the Book of Genesis, we find a remarkable image: when the Lord God creates the human person and the entire visible and invisible world, and after creating the human being as the crown of all creation, He breathes into the human person the breath of life. We can even say that God shares His own being with humanity.
And what does God breathe into the human person?
God breathes love into the human person, because He Himself is love. He also breathes relationship, communion, and unity of persons into humanity, because God is one in three Persons. This was God’s intention in creating the human person — that humanity would be filled with love and live in unity with others.
Saint Ephrem the Syrian says that the human person, as created by God in the beginning, was filled with light. He even invites us to imagine the human person as a lit candle. When a candle is lit, it gives light. And if someone were to try to extinguish it with their hand or tear out the wick, it would not be easy — they could burn their fingers, and the wick is not easily removed while the candle is burning.
But when the human person committed sin, when the relationship with God was broken, the divine light within the person was extinguished. Then envy is born in the human heart. This is why Cain is able to kill his brother Abel. As Ephrem explains, once the candle is extinguished, the wick can easily be broken, because the divine life is no longer present.
Yet in His great love for humanity, the Lord does not leave the human person in this state. In various ways, God continues to carry out His plan for humanity, in order to grant, as we heard in today’s reading from the Apostle, eternal life.
That is why Christ, the Son of God, comes into this world, becomes incarnate, and is born as a small child — innocent and defenseless. From the moment of His birth, Herod is already plotting to kill this Child. In haste, Joseph, together with the Virgin Mary, is forced to flee to a foreign land — to Egypt, far from their home — to remain there for some time among another people, another language, and another culture. And when Herod dies, they return to their own land, where Christ grows, preaches, and teaches.
And now this day arrives — the Feast of Theophany — when Christ comes to the Jordan to John the Baptist. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem offers a profound insight: when Christ enters the waters of the Jordan to be baptized, He, as the Son of God, sanctifies these waters by His very presence. And when Adam and all humanity later come to baptism, through these same waters they are able to receive what was lost through the Fall — the divine life, the adoption as children of God, which we receive through Jesus Christ.
Look around: we are all present here in this church. Each of us has an earthly father. I had my father — he has already passed away. But each of you has your own father. And I could never say to your father, “This is my father,” because that would not be true.
Yet all of us gathered here today, during this Divine Liturgy, when the moment comes to pray the “Our Father,” will with one heart and one voice cry out to our heavenly Father: “Our Father.”
Because through Christ’s death and resurrection, and through the baptism we have received, we have become children of God. And we have been granted the grace to call Him: Our Father, our Heavenly Father.
Therefore, I encourage you: the words that God the Father speaks today to Jesus Christ — “This is My beloved Son” — which we hear in today’s Gospel, are also addressed to each one of us. To everyone present here in this church, and to all who are listening:
You are My beloved son.
You are My beloved daughter.
I wish for you to remember these words and to live with this awareness. For the new life, the new creation, the new being has been given to us through baptism, which we have all received — because all of us who have been baptized into Christ have clothed ourselves in Christ.
May this awareness accompany us on the Feast of Theophany.
Christ Is Baptized!
In the River Jordan!
