Standard opening to each mystery [modified]: This series offers brief meditations on each of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. The third Luminous Mystery is about the “Coming of the Kingdom and Call to Conversion” which is central to the Lenten season of penance and seeking the Kingdom of God. Penance is not an end in itself, nor are the sufferings of Lent. The end and goal of Lent and its penances is deeper interior union with Christ through love of Jesus and desire to partake of his saving mysteries. The holiness that Lent offers us is a renewed and deeper union with Christ, the Philanthropos, the lover of every human. We must come to perceive God’s love in Christ (cf. John 3:16).
These brief meditations will look at each of the Luminous Mysteries in terms of their theological significance and their offering of the Kingdom—a share in God’s own divinity and light as “partakers of the Holy Spirit” (Heb 6:4). It is by desiring the heavenly goods of the Kingdom which these mysteries offer to us (cf. Heb 6:4-5) that we become more converted to Christ, our source of holiness. Desire and love follow upon knowledge. A person does not desire and love what he does not know. Love follows recognition of the good being offered to us. In these mysteries, we try to recognize Christ seeking us out and wanting to share his life and divinity in our souls.
These meditations will follow the key mystical teaching of Saint Catherine of Siena: to grow in holiness, then our desire for God must increase without limit (cf. The Dialogue, Ch. 91-92). We must recognize Jesus more and more as our true good. The Gospel must be presented. It is by praying these mysteries in union with Mary, “now and at the hour of our death,” that Our Loving Mother accompanies us with the grace of the Holy Spirit in her maternal care of every member of Christ’s mystical body. She is Mother of the Church. In the Rosary, we join with her in contemplating Jesus Christ our savior and the goods he wants us to possess: the infinite good of God himself in us (cf. Col 1:27) and “making us partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
Theological Significance of the Baptism of Jesus for Human Needs
It is at the Baptism of Jesus that the promise of eternal life and sharing in God’s divinity is first announced and made publicly available to us. The Messiah had been awaited in every human heart since the dawn of humanity. Even after the Fall, humans always at least vaguely understood that God must come down to us and join himself to us in order to share eternal life with us and give us access to heaven. Interestingly, Thomas Aquinas tells us that even before Adam sinned, Adam knew that the Messiah must come (ST II-II, 2.7): “before the state of sin, man believed, explicitly in Christ's Incarnation, in so far as it was intended for the consummation of glory…” For Thomas, it was because of the mystery of marriage – announced in Genesis 2 (cf. Ephesians 5:32) – that Adam saw the need for the Incarnation, so that divinity could be permanently joined to humanity (in a covenant like marriage) and made available to each human.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us” (Jn 1:14). The true light that enlightens every man came to plant that gift of sharing in divine and eternal life into the depths of human existence. He would plumb the depths of human existence to the point of the depths of human death, stake his claim upon every human in those depths, and give us a share in himself as the true or “Last Adam” (1 Cor 15:45). Rising from the dead, Christ “became a life-giving spirit” [the glorified body] (1 Cor 15:45). John the Baptist announced Jesus at the Baptism as the true light who would go into the depths of human experience when he said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” The sin of the world is our distance from God, our human wills separated from life in the Divine Will. Sin keeps our human hearts from resting in the divine heart of God’s kingdom, the mystery of life in the Holy Spirit, “partaker of the Holy Spirit” (Heb 6:4).
[“The Baptism of Jesus” by Fra Angelico, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
John pointed to the long-awaited Messiah: "I saw the Spirit descend as a dove [God’s Peace] from heaven, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God" (Jn 1:32-34).
The long-awaited Holy One had arrived for all humanity, Jesus Christ. He brought a new knowledge for a deeper love, a love which revealed God’s great love for every human—God with us. This is the new knowledge: God has an eternally begotten Son who is God from God, light from light, true God from true God. God has always been a communio of Persons before the foundation of the world, one in being, one God.
The Son took flesh and brings with him the mystery of the Spirit in order to restore humanity to life in the Spirit as “partakers of the Holy Spirit” (Heb 6:4). The Son came in order to give the Spirit and make us “sons in the Son” and partakers of God (CCC #52). The Messiah came to bring the age of sharing in God’s Spirit and Life. Moses pointed to this age when he came down from Mount Sinai, emanating light because he had been in the domain of heaven; it was what God promised to give to humanity from the beginning (cf. Ex 34:29-30).
Heaven permanently came down to earth in the flesh of Christ. God dwells with men and wants to bring us to dwell inside of his life and eternity, his Divine Will. In Jesus, heaven and earth were joined together. He brought the Spirit which humanity had rejected at the dawn of history. The Spirit remained upon Christ always because the Holy Spirit always filled Christ’s soul and always brought about the hypostatic union. The Word became flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit in order that a new source for sharing in divinity would be available for all of humanity. The true and “Last Adam” (1 Cor 15:45) became our source and head for sharing in divine life, the New Covenant.
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Doctor of the Church, Saint Irenaeus explains: “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God” [#460].
His thought is elucidated further in his other passages. Saint Irenaeus explains that the Son of God entered into fellowship with humans by becoming a child in the womb and so redeeming all children in those stages of development. The Logos became a baby saving and redeeming babies, a toddler saving toddlers, a youth saving youth, an adult saving adults. Lastly, he entered death to go into where all human existence is separated from God due to sin.
Through the Incarnation, the Lamb of God entered total fellowship and compassion with every human. He spiritually “married” mankind by taking our flesh to himself, becoming “one flesh” with us and recapitulating everything (cf. Ephesians 1:10, 5:31). Through Christ’s superior union with humanity, and our desire to enter into fellowship with him through faith, we can receive the Spirit that indwells him and is upon him. The more we enter into his life by the obedience of faith [gift-of-self], interior union develops and we partake of the divine existence inside Jesus’ humanity.
Jesus seeks us out, now seek out Jesus
In meditating on the mystery of Jesus’ Baptism – in union with the heart of Mary – through ten “Hail Mary’s” [a decade], what should we be contemplating? We remember that Jesus came into the waters of Baptism to seek us, the lost sheep. He did not need to be baptized by John as Matthew’s Gospel is clear. He was without sin and already the natural Son of God. He was baptized so John – a Levite and Prophet – could declare him to us and we could seek fellowship with the true anointed one of God—the Messiah. Jesus wanted to raise us up into his Kingdom and give us the Spirit. The lover of mankind, the Philanthropos was seeking us out. In the words of Saint John of the Cross, the lover was seeking the beloved and wanted to make us equal to himself by sharing the Holy Spirit.
The Messiah is inseparably the Lamb of God that John the Baptist announced and who came to lay down his life for us. Jesus did not come to Lord his authority over us but to lay down his life for us so that we could take authority over our lives by his power within us, the mystery of Christ in us. Through Jesus, we experience deliverance from the devil who held us in bondage through lies and sins. In the Baptism of Jesus, we see how the Lamb of God sought to come into our lives in order to accompany us into death. Unbeknownst to the crowds, at the Baptism, Jesus was accepting his mission to enter into death in order to redeem us, taste death for us, and conquer death for us: “Behold the Lamb of God.” To give us the Spirit, the Lamb of God had to die in order to enter his glory in the Resurrection so that his gloried body could become the “life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45).
Enter Christ’s Beatitudes
We should look upon him and admire his meekness at the Baptism and contemplate it. “Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9); God became man. True strength was shown in his peacefulness and patience: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:14). Humans do not have the Spirit by their own powers and cannot give it to themselves. We accept our true poverty, we acknowledge our sin, we need Jesus and the gifts he brings.
We pray to want the Spirit to be upon us and within us because without the Spirit we cannot enter into Jesus’ life and enter into the Beatitudes where eternal life is found. “Blessed are the poor,” “Blessed are the meek”—"Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart.” He entered our lives so that we could enter into his life through faith. We cannot enter into God’s domain without accepting the testimony at the Baptism: “This is the Son of God.” To accept it is to desire fellowship with and in “the Life.”
As baptized Christians, with Saint Paul we must now confess and desire: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, please give me always the Holy Spirit and live in me.
[Next Installment (about 2 weeks): The Wedding Feast at Cana]
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A Catechesis on Deification, Transfiguration & the Luminous Mysteries