Today's readings for Mass are all about water. Baptism in particular. In Lent, historically, we prepared newcomers to the faith for their baptism, and part of that preparation was to tell them exactly what they were in for.
Baptism is all about dying to self. Jesus was Himself baptised to "fulfill all righteousness," as it was the beginning of His sacrifice. Not only is it a washing, but it is a death and a burial as our Epistle reading for today indicates (1 Pet. 3.18-22). In our Gospel for today (Mk. 9.1-15) Our Lord is sealed by the Holy Spirit and receives the attestation of the Father, and is immediately sent into the wilderness for a 40 day purge and test. Make no mistake, these were the beginning blows of the sacrifice, where God the Word takes His human nature, perfectly united with His divine nature, and begins the process of setting it aside for proclaiming the Kingdom of God to the living...and to the dead. During the remainder of His life prior to His Passion, Death, and Burial, he brought the dead back to life to proclaim the Kingdom. According to Holy Tradition as recorded in the Epistle, during His sojourn among the dead he also proclaimed the Kingdom, and at the end of that sojourn, because Death could not hold the Deathless, He rose from the dead, and being perfectly unified as human and divine broke death's hold on humanity.
That is our hope. We take on baptism to unite us to His sacrifice, that in Him we die to our old selves and in Him rise again to the new life. We still have this old self battered by the corruption of the Ancestral Sin, but its hold is broken. In partaking of Christ's baptism, and in eating the bread that is His body and drinking the wine that is His blood, we unite ourselves to Him and at the end at the resurrection of the dead we are united in His life.
Keep that in mind over the next forty days as we engage in our forty days of testing.
May you have a Holy Lent.
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