Baptism of the Lord

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Baptism of the Lord

January 9, 2023

Disclosing the Mystery of Christ’s Baptism A homily by St Gregory Palamas

“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”
Great and exalted…is the mystery of Christ’s baptism contained in these
few words. It is both difficult to contemplate and hard to interpret, and no less
difficult to comprehend. But since it pertains especially to our salvation, we are
persuaded by Him who urges us to search the Scriptures, and take courage to
investigate the power of the mystery, as far as it is accessible to us. Just as in the
beginning, after God had said, “Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness”…so now that our nature was being re-made in Christ, when the Holy
Spirit was revealed through His descent from the supracelestial regions upon the
Lord being baptized in the Jordan, He disclosed the mystery of the most sublime
and all-accomplishing Trinity, which is able to save reasonable creatures.

…Man is the only creature who, in the image of the tri-hypostatic Being,
has a mind, reason, and a spirit which gives life to his body, inasmuch as he also
has a body which needs to be infused with life. When our nature was re-made in
the Jordan, the most sublime and all-accomplishing Trinity was made manifest,
as the archetype of the image in our soul.

“And lo”, it says, when He had just risen up from under the water, before
He had stepped out, “the heavens were opened unto him”. Please make a mental
effort, brethren, and focus your minds on what I am saying with the utmost care,
that you may understand the power of the mystery of Christian baptism. For the
time of His baptism, foreshadowed His descent into Hades; and, accordingly, His
coming up from under the water prefigured His resurrection from the dead.

As a fitting consequence, when He came up from the water the heavens
were immediately opened to Him. For at the time of His descent into Hades, He
went under the earth for our sake, and on returning thence, He opened all things
both to Himself and to us, not just things on or around the earth, but highest
heaven itself, to which afterwards He ascended bodily…Just as He foreshowed
the saving passion through the mystical bread and cup, and then handed on this
mystery to the faithful to perform for their salvation, so He mystically foretold
His descent into Hades and His ascent from there through this baptism of His,
and afterwards passed on this sacrament to believers to perform that they may be
saved. He allowed Himself suffering right from the start through these painless
means, causing us, according to the apostle, to be “planted together in the
likeness of his death”, that in due time we might also be vouchsafed the promised
resurrection.

“The heavens were opened unto him”, that He might be manifestly shown
to be the one who existed before the heavens, or rather, who was before anything
existed, as being with God, as the Word and Son of God, whose Father was not
born before Him, and as having a name with the Father, “Which is above every
name” and all speech. For when all those earthly and heavenly things which
appeared to be between Him and His Father in heaven were torn asunder and
thrown to each side, He alone was shown to be united with the Father and the
Spirit, as He existed with Them before anything was made.

2 Saint Gregory Palamas. Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies. Trans. Christopher Veniamin.

Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009, 493-497.

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Date:
January 9, 2023
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