Now as the people were in expectation, and all reasoned in their hearts about John, whether he was the Christ or not, John answered, saying to all, “I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” And with many other exhortations he preached to the people. But Herod the tetrarch, being rebuked by him concerning Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done, also added this, above all, that he shut John up in prison. When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized; and while He prayed, the heaven was opened. And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:15–22)
Today, then, is another kind of birth of the Savior. We see Him born with the same sort of signs, the same sort of wonders, but with greater mystery. And the Holy Spirit, who was present to Him then in the womb, now pours out upon Him in the torrent. He who then purified Mary for Him now sanctifies the running waters for Him. The Father who then overshadowed in power now cries out with His voice. And He who then, as if choosing the more prudent course, manifested Himself as a cloud at the nativity now bears witness to the truth; for God says: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear Him. Clearly the second birth is more excellent than the first. For the one brought forth Christ in silence and without a witness, but the other baptized the Lord gloriously with a profession of divinity; from the one Joseph, thought to be the father, absents himself, but at the other God the Father, not believed in, manifests Himself; in the one the mother labors under suspicion because in her condition she lacked a father, but in the other she is honored because God attests to His Son.…
Today, then, He is baptized in the Jordan. What sort of baptism is this, when the one who is dipped is purer than the font, and where the water that soaks the one whom it has received is not dirtied but honored with blessings? What sort of baptism is this of the Savior, I ask, in which the streams are made pure more than they purify? For by a new kind of consecration the water does not so much wash Christ as submit to being washed. Since the Savior plunged into the waters, He sanctified the outpouring of every flood and the course of every stream by the mystery of His baptism, so that when someone wishes to be baptized in the name of the Lord it is not so much the waters of this world that cover him but the waters of Christ that purify him. Yet the Savior willed to be baptized for this reason—not that He might cleanse Himself but that He might cleanse the waters for our sake.
Maximus of Turin, Sermon 13a: “On Holy Epiphany” 2–3
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