After the Epiphany, the liturgy leads us to a new, decisive moment in the revelation of God: the baptism of Jesus. In this commentary on the Sunday Gospel, Friar Luciano Audisio invites us to contemplate Christ’s descent into the Jordan as a key to understanding his mission and our own baptismal identity: beloved children who receive life as a gift.
The Jordan: a revealing descent
After having celebrated the Epiphany of the Lord, the manifestation of God to the peoples, the liturgy leads us today to a new, decisive moment of that revelation: the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. The God who was invisible has become visible in the flesh, and now allows himself to be recognized in an even more disconcerting gesture: he enters the water, submerges himself, descends. This is not a marginal episode in the life of Jesus, but a profoundly revealing event, which illuminates both his mission and our own baptismal life.
Matthew places us at the beginning of Jesus’ public life. It is the first time he appears on the scene, and he does so not with words or miracles, but with a silent gesture: an immersion in the Jordan, on the edge of the promised land. That river is not a simple geographical setting; it is a place charged with biblical memory. Israel had passed through there to enter the land of the gift. Those who trusted in God’s promise had crossed there. Jesus enters that same river to assume the entire history of his people and, at the same time, to open a new path.
Matthew’s text not only tells us something that happened to Jesus. It is written for communities that already know and practice baptism. Therefore, this story is also a catechesis: what happens to Jesus illuminates what happens in us. Our baptism is narrated symbolically in the baptism of Jesus. We too have been submerged, we too have crossed the Jordan, not to purify ourselves by our own strength, but to enter into a new life that is given to us.
Submerged in death for a new life
In the background of this story are the Jewish practices linked to water. The mikveh served to purify those who were in a state of ritual impurity. The person submerged himself and, through that gesture, recovered the possibility of presenting himself before God. The Hebrew verb tabal (טָבַל) expresses precisely that action of washing, of purifying. But when the Christian faith begins to be expressed in Greek, the term báptisma (βάπτισμα) is adopted, which not only indicates a washing, but a total immersion, so deep that it can even evoke the experience of dying in the water.
This choice is not accidental. It allows us to understand baptism not only as purification, but as participation in a death.
That is why Saint Paul can say that we have been baptized, that is, submerged, in the death of Christ. Baptism thus becomes a descent: a journey to the depths of our own deaths, our fears, our falls and failures. Not only biological death, but all those small deaths that run through our existence. And the great news is this: precisely there, at the lowest point in our history, God awaits us. Jesus has descended first. He has allowed himself to be submerged to find us where we thought God could not be.
Matthew presents the baptism of Jesus as an anticipation of his Passover. Water symbolizes death, and Jesus enters it freely. This gesture is the continuation of the incarnation: just as he assumed our flesh to sanctify it, now he assumes our death to transform it. In his baptism, death ceases to be a place of separation and becomes a place of justice, that is, the space where the correct relationship with God is restored. We thus discover that life is truly a gift, and that this gift is revealed to us more clearly when we touch the bottom of our own fragility.
Beloved children: the justice that is born of the gift
It is not strange, then, that John the Baptist resists: “I am the one who needs to be baptized by you.” It is the reaction of every believer to the gratuity of God: the awareness of not being up to the gift. But John also introduces a decisive novelty. Unlike the mikveh, where each one submerged himself, the baptism that he proposes is something that is received. It is passive. It is not conquered, it is welcomed. This reveals that salvation is not the fruit of human effort, but a gift that is offered to us.
Jesus answers John with disconcerting words: “Let me now.” These are the first words he pronounces in the Gospel of Matthew. It is as if he said: let me enter, let me descend, let me assume the human condition to the full. And he adds: “Thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” In the Bible, justice is not primarily the fulfillment of norms, but the correct relationship with God. Matthew, the most Jewish of the evangelists, wants to lead his readers from a justice understood as observance of the law towards a deeper justice: that of one who recognizes that he has received everything from God as a gift and lives from gratitude.
Baptism introduces us precisely into this justice. It invites us to let Christ enter into the depths of our being, into that secret room of the heart where our fears, our wounds, our shadows are hidden. There he wants to purify us, not to condemn us, but to heal us. The justice that is born of baptism does not come from our merits, but from the free love of God.
The story culminates with the sky opening and the voice of the Father: “This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” These words, addressed to Jesus, also resonated over each baptized person in the first Christian communities. They are the heart of faith: discovering ourselves as beloved children, people in whom God is pleased. In baptism, God not only forgives us; he names us, recognizes us, rejoices in us.
And that is the good news of today: submerged with Christ, raised with him, we live knowing that our life, even in its darkest areas, is a place of encounter with the God who calls us children and is pleased with us.
