Blessing of the Water – Nativity

19 January 1978

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

We are celebrating the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ. And we rejoice and stand in awe before three simultaneous events. The manifestation of the Anointed One, of Christ by the waters of Jordan, proclaimed by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God Who has come to save the world; we stand in awe and amazement at the glorious Theophany, the Revelation of God in the voice from Heaven: ‘This is My Son in Whom I am well pleased’. And in the coming upon Christ of the Holy Spirit to dwell with Him forever; and we stand in amazement before an event that touches the waters of Jordan and through them sanctifies all the world. In the voice, in the manifestation of the Lamb, in the coming of the Spirit we have a first vision of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. In the proclamation from Heaven we have a testimony that Him Who was baptised in Jordan was not a man like all men, but the Only Begotten Son, the Son of God incarnate, God Himself Who dwelt among us full of grace and power and beauty, in Whom the fullness of the Godhead resided in a human flesh. In the Incarnation we see love divine delivering itself into the hands of man, God giving Himself with all the frailty of love, making Himself defenseless as love is. The Babe born in Bethlehem reveals to us the defenselessness and the total gift of the love of God. But in the event which one keeps on Christmas night, of the nativity of Christ the will to enter into the world, to be the Lamb slan(ed) before all ages, belongs to the Only Begotten Son in the unity of the Father and the Spirit. On the bank of Jordan we see Jesus the man come to the full maturity of His manhood, Who accepts and endorses the act of God, the will Divine manifested in His Incarnation. He comes in order to merge Himself in the tragedy of mankind. Thousands had come to the banks of Jordan to John the Baptist, had confessed their sins and renounced them and they were washed, cleansed of their sins in these waters. The One Who now comes, is free of sin, it is God Himself endowed with human humanity. What baptism does He need? Why does He merge Himself in these waters? Is it a simple symbol and example? I believe it is more than this. He merges Himself with these water heavy with human sins, become deadly through human sins like the waters polluted now by human sin and greed and the careless way we treat nature. He enters into waters of death and He is as it were dyed with the sins of man; He emerges of these waters, carrying all the evil of the world but these waters have now changed. These waters that belonged to the world of man and through man to the world of sin, have now touched the holy immortal body of the Incarnate Son of God; they are now pure not only of the sins that have been washed away, but pure of all stains, freed of all sins, they have now become more than the primeval waters which God created in the first place; they are now waters of life, waters capable of communicating to us life eternal, they are a fountain welling forth into eternity. And this is why on this night and tomorrow morning we bless the water. This blessing means that we take the water of the world, soiled, heavy with evil and sin, prisoners of the fallness of man, and we bring them forth by faith to God, and God sends upon them the grace, the power, the indwelling, the transfiguring power of the Holy Spirit, and these waters are no longer the waters which we drew in the first place, they are the waters of Jordan touched by the holy, life-giving Body of God incarnate, and they can give us healing, cleansing, life. This is what we marvel. And tonight, what we partake in tonight, the knowledge that Jesus of Nazareth is the Lamb of God slain(ed) before all ages and now come in order to fulfil this mysterious call, to save. We marvel, and wander, and worship the Revelation of the Holy Trinity, the God of love, the Father Who gives unto death His Only Begotten Son, the Son Who takes it upon Himself, the Spirit Who dwells with Him, life eternal unto death, and we rejoice that in this world of sin the fullness of Godhead has come, that it has abided with us in the flesh and that the very material world that surrounds us, by the power of God can be redeemed, renewed and can communicate to us the hallowing which we are so often incapable of receiving from God either in prayer or through our life. Our spirit cannot soar, our hearts remain heavy and dark, our wills waver, our minds are confused, and lo, God reaches us by the waters of Baptism, His own and ours, by the anointing with oil to heal and to give us new life, by the bread and wine which He makes into Himself, and which make us consubstantial, of one nature with Him, partakers indeed of the divine nature. Let us worship God One in the Trinity, let us worship Him Who became man while remaining God ineffable. Let us thank Him for the means of grace, His mercy and His sacrificial love, and may the blessing of the Lord be upon you by His grace and love towards mankind, always now and forever and world without end. Amen.