Homily Three for the Holy Theophany of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ
By St. John of Kronstadt
By St. John of Kronstadt
"For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. 3:27).
"Unless one is born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God" (John 3:3, 5).
"He has saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5).
A new, most radiant feast has arrived, the Day of Lights, the day of the most glorious, mysterious Baptism of the Lord, to Whom we all owe our rebirth or regeneration, illumination, renewal and adoption by the Heavenly Father, from Whom mankind was alienated by the filth of sin for several thousand years.
Let us rejoice again, dear brothers and sisters, in the immeasurable goodness and wisdom of God, which miraculously arranged our rebirth in the waters of the Jordan, through the immersion in them of the flesh of the Lord of Glory Himself, who sanctified the waters, established and gave us the image and method of our mysterious renewal.
Profound and wonderful is this mystery! As wonderful and life-giving is the Mystery of the Divine Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, in which He rests entirely, through which He also powerfully accomplishes the cleansing of our sins, sanctification and deification, so wonderful and effective for the salvation of the human race defiled and perishing by sin is the Mystery of Divine Baptism; and one helps the other, both are necessary for salvation.
O, the ineffable wisdom and mystery of God, which can only be received and understood by faith, but not by the inquisitive, short-sighted and darkened by passions human mind. As our creation by God is the greatest mystery of the goodness, wisdom and omnipotence of God, so the mystery of our rebirth in baptism is a mystery before which the human mind must bow down in reverence. Only the infinite Mind of God could conceive and propose a sure means for the purification and regeneration of the human race, corrupted by sin, to the bones and marrow, to the very depths of the heart, and for the appropriation to God of man, completely alienated and perishing. No mind, not only human, but also angelic, could find a means for this.
The Holy Church, theologizing by the Holy Spirit, about the mystery of the Baptism of our Lord, says that the Lord, having been baptized in the waters of the Jordan, drowned human sin with His immeasurable righteousness, sanctified the waters and gave them the power of sanctification for all ages, in order to grant us the bath of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit; to open to us Paradise, closed by the fall of Adam, and to bring down to earth the Holy Spirit, Who had no place on earth to lay His head, because of the extreme depravity of the human race; to cleanse Adam from filth and raise him to heaven justified after five thousand years of punishment in hades.
“May You fill all things with Your glory, You have poured forth Yourself even to the image of a slave. Now You bow Your head to the hands of a slave (the Forerunner), slavishly cleansing my form,” the Church proclaims in the service for this feast.
“When You appeared in the flesh, the earth was sanctified, the waters were filled with blessings, the sky was illumined, and the human race was delivered from the bitter tyranny of the enemy."
"Having become the New Adam, you merge, by fire, and Spirit, and water, performing a strange rebirth and miraculous renewal, besides the destruction, you create anew with the God-giving Baptism. With the Spirit you create anew the soul, and with water you sanctify the formed body, edifying the life of man."
Glory to the Lord Jesus, who was baptized in the Jordan for our salvation and granted us rebirth, regeneration (second existence), adoption by God and eternal life, having destroyed the former partition wall of enmity and cursing, and our righteous rejection of God. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” that is, those who were baptized in the name of Christ and the Holy Trinity have put on Christ spiritually: His righteousness, holiness, meekness, humility, obedience, patience, self-control – in a word, in Christ’s perfection, in Christ’s image, in all the grace of Christ, in a new man, created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth (Eph. 4:24).
Have we put on Christ? Let us ask ourselves and reflect on this sincerely. And if we have not put on Christ, then we are not Christ’s. For the Apostle says that if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His (Rom. 8:9). "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
