2. Early life of Christ

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A fourth distinguishing fact is that He does not fit, as the other world teachers do, into the established category of a good man. Good men do not lie. But if Christ was not all that He said He was, namely, the Son of the living God, the Word of God in the flesh, then He was not “just a good man” then He was a knave, a liar, a charlatan and the greatest deceiver who ever lived. If He was not what He said He was, the Christ, the Son of God, He was the anti-Christ! If He was only a man, then He was not even a “good” man.

But He was not only a man. He would have us either worship Him or despise Him— despise Him as a mere man, or worship Him as true God and true man. That is the alternative He presents. It may very well be that the Communists, who are so anti-Christ, are closer to Him than those who see Him as a sentimentalist and a vague moral reformer. The Communists have at least decided that if He wins, they lose; the others are afraid to consider Him either as winning or losing, because they are not prepared to meet the moral demands which this victory would make on their souls.

If He is what He claimed to be, a Savior, a Redeemer, then we have a virile Christ and a leader worth following in these terrible times; One Who will step into the breach of death, crushing sin, gloom and despair; a leader to Whom we can make totalitarian sacrifice without losing, but gaining freedom, and Whom we can love even unto death. We need a Christ today Who will make cords and drive the buyers and sellers from our new temples; Who will blast the unfruitful fig-trees; Who will talk of crosses and sacrifices and Whose voice will be like the voice of the raging sea. But He will not allow us to pick and choose among His words, discarding the hard ones, and accepting the ones that please our fancy. We need a Christ Who will restore moral indignation, Who will make us hate evil with a passionate intensity, and love goodness to a point where we can drink death like water.

THE ANNUNCIATION

Every civilization has had a tradition of a golden age in the past. A more precise Jewish record tells of a fall from a state of innocence and happiness through a woman tempting a man. If a woman played such a role in the fall of mankind, should she not play a great role in its restoration? And if there was a lost Paradise in which the first nuptials of man and woman were celebrated, might there not be a new Paradise in which the nuptials of God and man would be celebrated?

In the fullness of time an Angel of Light came down from the great Throne of Light to a Virgin kneeling in prayer, to ask her if she was willing to give God a human nature. Her answer was that she “knew not man” and, therefore, could not be the mother of the “Expected of the Nations.”

There never can be a birth without love. In this the maiden was right. The begetting of new life requires the fires of love. But besides the human passion which begets life, there is the “passionless passion and wild tranquility” of the Holy Spirit; and it was this that overshadowed the woman and begot in her Emmanuel or “God with us.” At the moment that Mary pronounced Fiat or “Be it done,” something greater happened than the Fiat lux (Let there be light) of creation; for the light that was now made was not the sun, but the Son of God in the flesh. By pronouncing Fiat Mary achieved the full role of womanhood, namely, to be the bearer of God’s gifts to man. There is a passive receptiveness in which woman says Fiat to the cosmos as she shares its rhythm, Fiat to a man’s love as she receives it, and Fiat to God as she receives the Spirit.

Children come into the world not always as a result of a distinct act of love of man and woman. Though the love between the two be willed, the fruit of their love, which is the child, is not willed in the same way as their love one for another. There is an undetermined element in human love. The parents do not know whether the child will be a boy or a girl, or the exact time of its birth, for conception is lost in some unknown night of love. Children are later accepted and loved by their parents, but they were never directly willed into being by them. But in the Annunciation, the Child was not accepted in any unforeseen way; the Child was willed. There was a collaboration between a woman and the Spirit of Divine Love. The consent was voluntary under the Fiat; the physical cooperation was freely offered by the same word. Other mothers become conscious of motherhood through physical changes within them; Mary became conscious through a spiritual change wrought by the Holy Spirit. She probably received a spiritual ecstasy far greater than that given to man and woman in their unifying act of love.

As the fall of man was a free act, so too the Redemption had to be free. What is called the Annunciation was actually God asking the free consent of a creature to help Him to be incorporated into humanity.

Suppose a musician in an orchestra freely strikes a sour note. The conductor is competent, the music is correctly scored and easy to play, but the musician still exercises his freedom by introducing a discord which immediately passes out into space. The director can do one of two things: he can either order the selection to be replayed, or he can ignore the discord. Fundamentally, it makes no difference which he does, for that false note is traveling out into space at the rate of more than a thousand feet per second; and as long as time endures, there will be discord in the universe.

Is there any way to restore harmony to the world? It can be done only by someone coming in from eternity and stopping the note in its wild flight. But will it still be a false note? The harmony can be destroyed on one condition only. If that note is made the first note in a new melody, then it will become harmonious.

This is precisely what happened when Christ was born. There had been a false note of moral discord introduced by the first man which infected all humanity. God could have ignored it, but it would have been a violation of justice for Him to do so, which is, of course, unthinkable. What He did, therefore, was to ask a woman, representing humanity, freely to give Him a human nature with which He would start a new humanity. As there was an old humanity in Adam, so there would be a new humanity in Christ, Who was God made man through the free agency of a human mother. When the angel appeared to Mary, God was announcing this love for the new humanity. It was the beginning of a new earth, and Mary became “a flesh-girt Paradise to be gardened by the Adam new.” As in the first garden Eve brought destruction, so in the garden of her womb, Mary would now bring Redemption.

For the nine months that He was cloistered within her, all the food, the wheat, the grapes that she consumed served as a kind of natural Eucharist, passing into Him Who later on was to declare that He was the Bread and the Wine of Life. After her nine months were over, the fitting place for Him to be born was Bethlehem, which meant “House of Bread.” Later on He would say:

God’s gift of bread comes down from heaven

And gives life to the whole world.

JOHN 6:23 

It is I Who am the Bread of Life;

He who comes to Me will never be hungry.

JOHN 6:35

When the Divine Child was conceived, Mary’s humanity gave Him hands and feet, eyes and ears, and a body with which to suffer. Just as the petals of a rose after a dew close on the dew as if to absorb its energies, so too, Mary as the Mystical Rose closed upon Him Whom the Old Testament had described as a dew descending upon the earth. When finally she did give Him birth, it was as if a great ciborium had opened, and she was holding in her fingers the Guest Who was also the Host of the world, as if to say, “Look, this is the Lamb of God; look, this is He Who takes away the sins of the world.”

THE VISITATION

Mary was given a sign that she would conceive by the Holy Ghost. Her elderly cousin

Elizabeth had already conceived a son in her old age, and was now in her sixth month. Mary, now bearing the Divine Secret within her, journeyed several days from Nazareth to the city of Hebron, which, according to tradition, rested over the ashes of the founders of the people of God—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Elizabeth, in some mysterious way, knew that Mary was bearing within herself the Messias. She asked:

How have I deserved to be

Thus visited by the Mother of My Lord?

LUKE 1:43

This salutation came from the mother of the herald to the mother of the King Whose path the herald was destined to prepare. John the Baptist, still cloistered in his mother’s womb, on his mother’s testimony leaped with joy at the mother who brought the Christ to her home.

Mary’s response to this salutation is called the Magnificat, a song of joy celebrating what God had done for her. She looked back over history, back to Abraham; she saw the activity of God preparing for this moment from generation to generation, she looked also into an indefinite future when all peoples and all generations would call her “Blessed.” Israel’s Messias was on His way, and God was about to manifest Himself on earth and in the flesh. She even prophesied the qualities of the Son Who was to be born of her as full of justice and mercy. Her poem ends by acclaiming the revolution He will inaugurate with the unseating of the mighty and the exaltation of the humble.

THE PREHISTORY OF CHRIST

The Lord to be born of Mary is the only Person in the world Who ever had a prehistory; a prehistory to be studied not in the primeval slime and jungles, but in the bosom of the Eternal Father. Though He appeared as the Cave Man in Bethlehem, since He was born in a stable hewn out of rock, His beginning in time as man was without beginning as God in the agelessness of eternity. Only progressively did He reveal His Divinity; and this was not because He grew in the consciousness of Divinity; it was due rather to His intent to be slow in revealing the purpose of His coming.

St. John at the beginning of his Gospel relates His prehistory as the Son of God:

In the beginning was the Word,

And the Word was with God;

And the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by Him,

And without Him was made nothing that was made.

JOHN 1:1–3

“In the beginning was the Word.” Whatever there is in the world, is made according to the thought of God, for all things postulate thought. Every bird, every flower, every tree was made according to an idea existing in the Divine Mind. Greek philosophers held that thought was abstract. Now, the Thought or Word of God is revealed as Personal. Wisdom is vested in Personality. Prior to His earthly existence, Jesus Christ is eternally God, the Wisdom, the Thought of the Father. In His earthly existence, He is that Thought or Word of God speaking to men. The words of men pass away when they have been conceived and uttered, but the Word of God is eternally uttered and can never cease from utterance. By His Word, the Eternal Father presses all that He understands, all that He knows. As the mind holds converse with itself by its own thought, and sees and knows the world by means of this thought, so does the Father see Himself, as in a mirror, in the Person of His Word. Finite intelligence needs many words in order to express ideas; but God speaks once and for all within Himself—one single Word which reaches the abyss of all things that are known and can be known. In that Word of God are hidden all the treasures of wisdom, all the secrets of sciences, all the designs of the arts, all the knowledge of mankind. But this knowledge, compared to the Word, is only the feeblest broken syllable.

In the agelessness of eternity, the Word was with God. But there was a moment in time when He had not come forth from the Godhead, as there is a moment when a thought in the mind of man is not yet uttered. As the sun is never without its beam, so the Father is never without His Son; and as the thinker is not without a thought, so in an infinite degree, the Divine Mind is never without His Word. God did not spend the everlasting ages in sublime solitary activity. He had a Word with Him equal to Himself.

All things were made by Him,

And without Him was made nothing that was made.

In Him was life and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness;

And the darkness did not comprehend it.

JOHN 1:3–5

Everything in space and time exists because of the creative Power of God. Matter is not eternal; the universe has an intelligent Personality back of it, an Architect, a Builder, and a Sustainer. Creation is the work of God. The sculptor works on marble, the painter on canvas, the machinist on matter, but none of them can create. They bring existing things into new combinations, but nothing else. Creation belongs to God alone.

God writes His name on the soul of every man. Reason and conscience are the God within us in the natural order. The Fathers of the early Church were wont to speak of the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle as the unconscious Christ within us. Men are like so many books issuing from the Divine press, and if nothing else be written on them, at least the name of the Author is indissolubly engraved on the title page. God is like the watermark on paper, which may be written over without ever being obscured.

BETHLEHEM

Caesar Augustus, the master bookkeeper of the world, sat in his palace by the Tiber. Before him was stretched a map labeled Orbis Terrarum, Imperium Romanum. He was about to issue an order for a census of the world; for all the nations of the civilized world were subject to Rome. There was only one capital in this world: Rome; only one official language: Latin; only one ruler: Caesar. To every outpost, to every satrap and governor, the order went out: every Roman subject must be enrolled in his own city. On the fringe of the Empire, in the little village of Nazareth, soldiers tacked up on walls the order for all the citizens to register in the towns of their family origins.

Joseph, the builder, an obscure descendant of the great King David, was obliged by that very fact to register in Bethlehem, the city of David. In accordance with the edict, Mary and Joseph set out from the village of Nazareth for the village of Bethlehem, which lies about five miles on the other side of Jerusalem. Five hundred years earlier the prophet Micheas had prophesied concerning that little village:

And thou, Bethlehem, of the land of Juda,

Art far from the least among the princes of Juda,

For out of thee will arise a leader who is to be

The shepherd of My people Israel.

MATTHEW 2:6

Joseph was full of expectancy as he entered the city of his family, and was quite convinced that he would have no difficulty in finding lodgings for Mary, particularly on account of her condition. Joseph went from house to house only to find each one crowded. He searched in vain for a place where He, to Whom heaven and earth belonged, might be born. Could it be that the Creator would not find a home in creation? Up a steep hill Joseph climbed to a faint light which swung on a rope across a doorway. This would be the village inn. There, above all other places, he would surely find shelter. There was room in the inn for the soldiers of Rome who had brutally subjugated the Jewish people; there was room for the daughters of the rich merchants of the East; there was room for those clothed in soft garments, who lived in the houses of the king; in fact, there was room for anyone who had a coin to give the innkeeper; but there was no room for Him Who came to be the Inn of every homeless heart in the world. When finally the scrolls of history are completed down to the last words in time, the saddest line of all will be: “There was no room in the inn.”

Out to the hillside to a stable cave, where shepherds sometimes drove their flocks in time of storm, Joseph and Mary went at last for shelter. There, in a place of peace in the lonely abandonment of a cold windswept cave; there, under the floor of the world, He Who is born without a mother in heaven, is born without a father on earth. 

Of every other child that is born into the world, friends can say that it resembles his mother. This was the first instance in time that anyone could say that the mother resembled the Child. This is the beautiful paradox of the Child Who made His mother; the mother, too, was only a child. It was also the first time in the history of this world that anyone could ever think of heaven as being anywhere else than “somewhere up there” when the Child was in her arms, Mary now looked down to Heaven.

In the filthiest place in the world, a stable, Purity was born. He, Who was later to be slaughtered by men acting as beasts, was born among beasts. He, Who would call Himself the “living Bread descended from Heaven,” was laid in a manger, literally, a place to eat. Centuries before, the Jews had worshiped the golden calf, and the Greeks, the ass. Men bowed down before them as before God. The ox and the ass now were present to make their innocent reparation, bowing down before their God.

There was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. The inn is the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful. But the stable is a place for the outcasts, the ignored, the forgotten. The world might have expected the Son of God to be born—if He was to be born at all—in an inn. A stable would be the last place in the world where one would have looked for Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.

No worldly mind would ever have suspected that He Who could make the sun warm the earth would one day have need of an ox and an ass to warm Him with their breath; that He Who, in the language of Scriptures, could stop the turning about of Arcturus would have His birthplace dictated by an imperial census; that He, Who clothed the fields with grass, would Himself be naked; that He, from Whose hands came planets and worlds, would one day have tiny arms that were not long enough to touch the huge heads of the cattle; that the feet which trod the everlasting hills would one day be too weak to walk; that the Eternal Word would be dumb; that Omnipotence would be wrapped in swaddling clothes; that Salvation would lie in a manger; that the bird which built the nest would be hatched therein—no one would ever have suspected that God coming to this earth would ever be so helpless. And that is precisely why so many miss Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.

If the artist is at home in his studio because the paintings are the creation of his own mind; if the sculptor is at home among his statues because they are the work of his own hands; if the husbandman is at home among his vines because he planted them; and if the father is at home among his children because they are his own, then surely, argues the world, He Who made the world should be at home in it. He should come into it as an artist into his studio, and as a father into his home; but, for the Creator to come among His creatures and be ignored by them; for God to come among His own and not be received by His own; for God to be homeless at home—that could only mean one thing to the worldly mind: the Babe could not have been God at all. And that is just why it missed Him. Divinity is always where one least expects to find it.

The Son of God made man was invited to enter His own world through a back door. Exiled from the earth, He was born under the earth, in a sense, the first Cave Man in recorded history. There He shook the earth to its very foundations. Because He was born in a cave, all who wish to see Him must stoop. To stoop is the mark of humility. The proud refuse to stoop and, therefore, they miss Divinity. Those, however, who bend their egos and enter, find that they are not in a cave at all, but in a new universe where sits a Babe on His mother’s lap, with the world poised on His fingers.

The manger and the Cross thus stand at the two extremities of the Savior’s life! He accepted the manger because there was no room in the inn; He accepted the Cross because men said, “We will not have this Man for our king.” Disowned upon entering, rejected upon leaving, He was laid in a stranger’s stable at the beginning, and a stranger’s grave at the end. An ox and an ass surrounded His crib at Bethlehem; two thieves were to flank His Cross on Calvary. He was wrapped in swaddling bands in His birthplace, He was again laid in swaddling clothes in His tomb—clothes symbolic of the limitations imposed on His Divinity when He took a human form.

The shepherds watching their flocks nearby were told by the angels:

This is the sign by which you are to know Him;

You will find a Child still in swaddling clothes,

Lying in a manger.

LUKE 2:12 

He was already bearing His Cross—the only cross a Babe could bear, a cross of poverty,

exile and limitation. His sacrificial intent already shone forth in the message the angels

sang to the hills of Bethlehem:

This day, in the city of David,

A Savior has been born for you,

The Lord Christ Himself.

LUKE 2:11

Covetousness was already being challenged by His poverty, while pride was confronted with the humiliation of a stable. The swathing of Divine power, which needs to accept no bounds, is often too great a tax upon minds which think only of power. They cannot grasp the idea of Divine condescension, or of the “rich man becoming poor that through His poverty, we might be rich.” Men shall have no greater sign of Divinity than the absence of power as they expect it—the spectacle of a Babe Who said He would come in the clouds of heaven, now being wrapped in the cloths of earth.

He, Whom the angels call the “Son of the most High,” descended into the red dust from which we all were born, to be one with weak, fallen man in all things, save sin. And it is the swaddling clothes which constitute His “sign.” If He Who is Omnipotence had come with thunderbolts, there would have been no sign. There is no sign unless something happens contrary to nature. The brightness of the sun is no sign, but an eclipse is. He said that on the last day, His coming would be heralded by “signs in the sun,” perhaps an extinction of light. At Bethlehem the Divine Son went into an eclipse, so that only the humble of spirit might recognize Him.

Only two classes of people found the Babe: the shepherds and the Wise Men; the simple and the learned; those who knew that they knew nothing, and those who knew that they did not know everything. He is never seen by the man of one book; never by the man who thinks he knows. Not even God can tell the proud anything! Only the humble can find God!

As Caryll Houselander put it, “Bethlehem is the inscape of Calvary, just as the snowflake is the inscape of the universe.” This same idea was expressed by the poet who said that if he knew the flower in a crannied wall in all its details, he would know “what God and man is.” Scientists tell us that the atom comprehends within itself the mystery of the solar system.

It was not so much that His birth cast a shadow on His life, and thus led to His death; it was rather that the Cross was there from the beginning, and it cast its shadow backward to His birth. Ordinary mortals go from the known to the unknown submitting themselves to forces beyond their control; hence we can speak of their “tragedies.” But He went from the known to the known, from the reason for His coming, namely, to be “Jesus” or “Savior,” to the fulfillment of His coming, namely, the death on the Cross. Hence, there was no tragedy in His life; for, tragedy implies the unforeseeable, the uncontrollable, and the fatalistic. Modern life is tragic when there is spiritual darkness and unredeemable guilt. But for the Christ Child there were no uncontrollable forces; no submission to fatalistic chains from which there could be no escape; but there was an “inscape”—the microcosmic manger summarizing, like an atom, the macrocosmic Cross on Golgotha.

In His First Advent, He took the name of Jesus, or “Savior” it will only be in His Second Advent that He will take the name of “Judge.” Jesus was not a name He had before He assumed a human nature; it properly refers to that which was united to His Divinity, not that which existed from all eternity. Some say “Jesus taught” as they would say “Plato taught,” never once thinking that His name means “Savior from sin.” Once He received this name, Calvary became completely a part of Him. The Shadow of the Cross that fell on His cradle also covered His naming. This was “His Father’s business” everything else would be incidental to it.

PREHISTORY NOW HISTORY

“The Word became Flesh.” The Divine Nature, which was pure and holy, entered as a renovating principle into the corrupted line of Adam’s race, without being affected by corruption. Through the Virgin Birth, Jesus Christ became operative in human history without being subject to the evil in it.

And the Word was made flesh,

And came to dwell among us;

And we had sight of His glory,

Glory such as belongs to

The Father’s only-begotten Son,

Full of grace and truth.

JOHN 1:14

Bethlehem became a link between heaven and earth; God and man met here and looked each other in the face. In the taking of human flesh, the Father prepared it, the Spirit formed it, and the Son assumed it. He Who had an eternal generation in the bosom of the Father now had a temporal generation in time. He Who had His birth in Bethlehem came to be born in the hearts of men. For, what would it profit if He was born a thousand times in Bethlehem unless He was born again in man?

But all those who did welcome Him,

He empowered to become the children of God.

JOHN 1:12

Now man need not hide from God as Adam did; for He can be seen through Christ’s human nature. Christ did not gain one perfection more by becoming man, nor did He lose anything of what He possessed as God. There was the Almightiness of God in the movement of His arm, the Infinite Love of God in the beatings of His human heart and the Unmeasured Compassion of God to sinners in His eyes. God is now manifest in the flesh; this is what is called the Incarnation. The whole range of the Divine attributes of power and goodness, justice, love, beauty, were in Him. And when Our Divine Lord acted and spoke, God in His perfect nature became manifest to those who saw Him and heard Him and touched Him. As He told Philip later on:

Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.

JOHN 14:9

No man can love anything unless he can get his arms around it, and the cosmos is too big and too bulky. But once God became a Babe and was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, men could say, “This is Emmanuel, this is God with us.” By His reaching down to frail human nature and lifting it up to the incomparable prerogative of union with Himself, human nature became dignified. So real was this union that all of His acts and words, all of His agonies and tears, all of His thoughts and reasonings, resolves and emotions, while being properly human, were at the same time the acts and words, agonies and tears, thoughts and reasonings, resolves and emotions of the Eternal Son of God.

What men call the Incarnation is but the union of two natures, the Divine and the human in a single Person Who governs both. This is not difficult to understand; for what is man but a sample, at an immeasurably lower level, of a union of two totally different substances, one material and the other immaterial, one the body, the other the soul, under the regency of a single human personality? What is more remote from one another than powers and capacities of flesh and spirit? Antecedent to their unity, how difficult it would be ever to conceive of a moment when body and soul would be united in a single personality. That they are so united is an experience clear to every mortal. And yet it is an experience at which man does not marvel because of its familiarity.

God, Who brings together body and soul into one human personality, notwithstanding their difference of nature, could surely bring about the union of a human body and a human soul with His Divinity under the control of His Eternal Person. This is what is meant by the

And the Word was made flesh,

And came to dwell among us.

JOHN 1:14

The Person which assumed human nature was not created, as is the case of all other persons. His Person was the pre-existent Word or Logos. His human nature, on the other hand, was derived from the miraculous conception by Mary, in which the Divine overshadowing of the Spirit and the human Fiat or the consent of a woman, were most beautifully blended. This is the beginning of a new humanity out of the material of the fallen race. When the Word became flesh, it did not mean that any change took place in the Divine Word. The Word of God proceeding forth did not leave the Father’s side. What happened was not so much the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, as the taking of a manhood into God.

There was continuity with the fallen race of man through the manhood taken from Mary; there is discontinuity through the fact that the Person of Christ is the pre-existent Logos. Christ thus literally becomes the second Adam, the Man through whom the human race starts all over. His teaching centered on the incorporation of human natures to Him, after the manner in which the human nature that He took from Mary was united to the Eternal Word. 

It is hard for a human being to understand the humility that was involved in the Word becoming flesh. Imagine, if it were possible, a human person divesting himself of his body, and then sending his soul into the body of a serpent. A double humiliation would follow: first, accepting the limitations of a serpentine organism, knowing all the while his mind was superior, and that fangs could not adequately articulate thoughts no serpent ever possessed. The second humiliation would be to be forced as a result of this “emptying of self” to live in the companionship of serpents. But all this is nothing compared to the emptying of God, by which He took on the form of man and accepted the limitations of humanity, such as hunger and persecution; not trivial either was it for the Wisdom of God to condemn Himself to association with poor fishermen who knew so little. But this humiliation which began in Bethlehem when He was conceived in the Virgin Mary was only the first of many to counteract the pride of man, until the final humiliation of death on the Cross. If there were no Cross, there would have been no crib; if there had been no nails, there would have been no straw. But He could not teach the lesson of the Cross as payment for sin; He had to take it. God the Father did not spare His Son—so much did He love mankind. That was the secret wrapped in the swaddling bands.

THE NAME “JESUS”

The name “Jesus” was a fairly common one among the Jews. In the original Hebrew, it was “Josue.” The angel told Joseph that Mary would:

Bear a son, whom thou shalt call Jesus,

For He is to save His people from their sins.

MATTHEW 1:21

This first indication of the nature of His mission on earth does not mention His teaching; for the teaching would be ineffective, unless there was first salvation. He was given another name at the same time, the name “Emmanuel.”

Behold, the virgin shall be with child,

And shall bear a son,

And they shall call Him Emmanuel,

(which means God with us).

MATTHEW 1:23

This name was taken from the prophecy of Isaias and it assured something besides a Divine presence; together with the name “Jesus,” it meant a Divine presence which delivers and saves. The angel also told Mary:

And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb,

And shalt bear a son, and shalt call Him Jesus.

He shall be great, and men will know Him for the Son of the Most High;

The Lord God will give Him the throne of His Father David,

And He shall reign over the house of Jacob eternally;

His kingdom shall never have an end.

LUKE 1:31–33

The title “Son of the Most High” was the very one that was given to the Redeemer by the evil spirit which possessed the youth in the land of the Gerasenes. The fallen angel thus confessed Him to be what the unfallen angel said He was:

Why dost thou meddle with me, Jesus

Son of the Most High God?

MARK 5:7

The salvation that is promised by the name “Jesus” is not a social salvation, but rather a spiritual one. He would not save people necessarily from their poverty, but he would save them from their sins. To destroy sin is to uproot the first causes of poverty. The name “Jesus” brought back the memory of their great leader, who had brought them out of Israel to rest in the promised land. The fact that He was prefigured by Josue indicates that He had the soldierly qualities necessary for the final victory over evil, which would come from the glad acceptance of suffering, unwavering courage, resoluteness of will and unshakable devotion to the Father’s mandate.

The people enslaved under the Roman yoke were seeking deliverance; hence they felt that any prophetic fulfillment of the ancient Josue would have something to do with politics. Later on, the people would ask Him when He was going to deliver them from the power of Caesar. But here, at the very beginning of His life, the Divine Soldier affirmed through an angel that He had come to conquer a greater enemy than Caesar. They must still render to Caesar the things that were Caesar’s; His mission was to deliver them from a far greater bondage, namely, that of sin. All through His life people would continue to materialize the concept of salvation, thinking that deliverance was to be interpreted only in terms of the political. The name “Jesus” or Savior was not given to Him after He had wrought salvation, but at the very moment He was conceived in the womb of His mother. The foundation of His salvation was from eternity and not from time.

“FIRSTBORN”

She brought forth a Son, her first-born.

LUKE 2:7

The term “firstborn” did not mean that Our Lady was to bear other children according to the flesh. There was always a position of honor assigned in law to the firstborn, even if there were not any other children. It could very well be that Luke employs the term here in view of the account which he later on is to give of the Blessed Mother presenting her Child in the temple “as the firstborn Son.” The other brethren of Our Lord mentioned by Luke were not sons of Mary; they were either half brothers, sons of Joseph by a possible former marriage, or else His cousins. Mary had no other children in the flesh. But “firstborn” could mean Our Lady’s relation to other children she would have according to the Spirit. In this sense, her Divine Son called John her “son” at the foot of the Cross. Spiritually, John was her “second son.” St. Paul later on used the term “firstborn” in time to parallel Our Lord’s Eternal Generation as the Only Begotten of the Father. It was only to His Divine Son that God said:

Thou art My Son,

I have begotten Thee this day.

And, again, He shall find in Me a Father,

And I in Him a Son.

Why, when the time comes

For bringing His first-born into the world anew,

Then He says,

Let all the angels of God worship before Him.

HEBREWS 1:5–6

CHRIST’S FAMILY TREE

Though His Divine nature was from eternity, His human nature had a Jewish background. The blood that flowed in His veins was from the royal house of David through His mother who, though poor, belonged to the lineage of the great king. His contemporaries called Him the “Son of David.” The people would never have consented to regard as a Messias any pretender who did not fulfill this indispensable condition. Nor did Our Blessed Lord Himself ever deny His Davidic origin. He only affirmed that His Davidic affiliation did not explain the relations which He possessed with the Father in His Divine Personality.

The opening words of the Gospel of Matthew suggest the Genesis of Our Lord. The Old Testament begins with the Genesis of heaven and earth through God making all things. The New Testament had another kind of Genesis, in the sense that it describes the making of all things new. The genealogy that is given implies that Christ was “a Second Man,” and not merely one of the many that had sprung from Adam. Luke, who directed his Gospel to the Gentiles, traced Our Lord’s descent back to the first man, but Matthew, who directed his Gospel to the Jews, set Him forth as “Son of David and the Son of Abraham.” The difference in the genealogy between Luke and Matthew is due to the fact that Luke, writing for the Gentiles, was careful to give a natural descent; while Matthew, writing for the Jews, verged from the natural after the time of David, in order to make it clear to the Jews that Our Lord was the Heir to the Kingdom of David.

Luke is concerned about the Son of Man; Matthew about the King of Israel. Hence Matthew opens his Gospel:

A record of the ancestry from which Jesus Christ,

The Son of David, Son of Abraham, was born.

MATTHEW 1:1

Matthew pictures the generations from Abraham to Our Lord as having passed through three cycles of fourteen each. This does not, however, represent a complete genealogy. Fourteen are mentioned from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the Babylonian captivity to Our Blessed Lord. The genealogy goes beyond the Hebrew background to include a few non-Jews. There may have been a very good reason for this, as well as for the inclusion of others who had not the best reputations in the world. One was Rahab, who was a foreigner and a sinner; another was Ruth, a foreigner though received into the nation; a third was the sinner Bethsabee whose sin with David cast shame upon the royal line. Why should there be blots on the royal escutcheon, such as Bethsabee, whose womanly purity was tainted; and Ruth who, though morally good, was an introducer of alien blood into the stream? Possibly it was in order to indicate Christ’s relationship to the stained and to the sinful, to harlots and sinners, and even to the Gentiles who were included in His Message and Redemption.

In some translations of Scripture, the word that is used to describe the genealogy is the word “begot” for example, “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob” in other translations there is the expression “was the father of” for example, “Jechonias was the father of Salathiel.” The translation is unimportant; what stands out is that this monotonous expression is used throughout forty-one generations. But it is omitted when the forty-second generation is reached. Why? Because of the Virgin Birth of Jesus.

And Jacob was the father of Joseph,

The husband of Mary;

It was of her that Jesus was born who was called Christ.

MATTHEW 1:16

Matthew, drawing up the genealogy, knew that Our Lord was not the Son of Joseph. Hence on the very first pages of the Gospel, Our Lord is presented as connected with the race which nevertheless did not wholly produce Him. That He came into it, was obvious; yet He was distinct from it.

If there was a suggestion of the Virgin Birth in the genealogy of Matthew, so there was a suggestion of it in the genealogy of Luke. In Matthew, Joseph is not described as having begotten Our Lord, and in Luke, Our Lord is called:

By repute, the Son of Joseph.

LUKE 3:23

He meant that Our Lord was popularly supposed to be the Son of Joseph. Combining the two genealogies; in Matthew, Our Lord is the Son of David and of Abraham; He is, in Luke, the Son of Adam and the seed of the woman God promised would crush the head of the serpent. Men who are not moral, by God’s Providence, are made the instruments of His policy; David, who murdered Urias, nevertheless is the channel through which the blood of Abraham floods into the blood of Mary. There were sinners in the family tree, and He would seem to be the greatest sinner of all when He would hang upon the family tree of the Cross, making men adopted sons of the Heavenly Father.

CIRCUMCISION

When eight days had passed, and

The boy must be circumcised,

He was called Jesus, the name which

The angel had given Him before

Ever He was conceived in the womb.

LUKE 2:21

Circumcision was the symbol of the covenant between God and Abraham and his seed, and took place on the eighth day. Circumcision presumed that the person circumcised was a sinner. The Babe was now taking the sinner’s place—something He was to do all through His life. Circumcision was a sign and token of membership in the body of Israel. Mere human birth did not bring a child into the body of God’s chosen people. Another rite was required, as recorded in the Book of Genesis:

Then God said to Abraham, thou too

Shalt observe this covenant of Mine,

Thou and the race that shall follow thee,

Generation after generation.

This is the covenant you shall keep with Me,

Thou and thine; every male child

Of yours shall be circumcised.

GENESIS 17:9–9

Circumcision in the Old Testament was a prefiguring of Baptism in the New Testament. Both symbolize a renunciation of the flesh with its sins. The first was done by wounding of the body; the second, by cleansing the soul. The first incorporated the child into the body of Israel; the second incorporates the child into the body of the new Israel or the Church. The term “Circumcision” was later used in the Scriptures to reveal the spiritual significance of applying the Cross to the flesh through self-discipline. Moses, in the Book of Deuteronomy clearly spoke of circumcising the heart. Jeremias also used the same expression. St. Stephen, in his last address before being killed, told his hearers that they were uncircumcised in heart and ears. By submitting to this rite, which He need not have done because He was sinless, the Son of God made man satisfied the demands of His nation, just as He was to keep all the other Hebrew regulations. He kept the Passover; He observed the Sabbath; He went up to the Feasts; He obeyed the Old Law until the time came for Him to fulfill it by realizing and spiritualizing its shadowy prefigurements of God’s dispensation.

In the Circumcision of the Divine Child there was a dim suggestion and hint of Calvary, in the precocious surrendering of blood. The shadow of the Cross was already hanging over a Child eight days old. He would have seven bloodsheddings of which this was the first, the others being the Agony in the Garden, the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Way of the Cross, the Crucifixion, and the Piercing of His Heart. But whenever there was an indication of Calvary, there was also some sign of glory; and it was at this moment when He was anticipating Calvary by shedding His blood that the name of Jesus was bestowed on Him.

A Child only eight days old was already beginning the bloodshedding that would fulfill His perfect manhood. The cradle was tinged with crimson, a token of Calvary. The Precious Blood was beginning its long pilgrimage. Within an octave of His birth, Christ obeyed a law of which He Himself was the Author, a law which was to find its last application in Him. There had been sin in human blood, and now blood was already being poured out to do away with sin. As the East catches at sunset the colors of the West, so does the Circumcision reflect Calvary.

Must He begin redeeming all at once? Cannot the Cross wait? There will be plenty of time for it. Coming straight from the Father’s arms to the arms of His earthly mother, He is carried in her arms to His first Calvary. Many years later He will be taken from her arms again, after the bruising of the flesh on the Cross, when the Father’s work is done.

PRESENTATION IN THE TEMPLE

At Bethlehem He had been an exile; at the Circumcision, an anticipated Savior; now at the Presentation, He became a sign to be contradicted. As Jesus was circumcised, so Mary was purified, though He needed not the first because He was God, and she needed not the second because she was conceived without sin.

And when the time had come for

Purification according to the law of Moses,

They brought Him up to Jerusalem,

To present Him before the Lord there.

LUKE 2:22

The fact of sin in human nature is underlined not only by the necessity of enduring pain to expiate for it in circumcision, but also by the need for purification. Ever since Israel had been delivered from the bondage of the Egyptians, after the firstborn of the Egyptians had been slain, the firstborn of the Jews had always been looked upon as one dedicated to God. Forty days after His birth, which was the appointed time for a male child according to the Law, Jesus was brought to the temple. Exodus decreed that the firstborn belonged to God. In the Book of Numbers, the tribe of Levi was set apart for the priestly function, and this priestly dedication was understood as a substitute for the sacrifice of the firstborn, a rite which was never practiced. But when the Divine Child was taken to the temple by Mary, the law of the consecration of the firstborn was observed in its fullness; for this Child’s dedication to the Father was absolute, and would lead Him to the Cross.

We find here another instance of how God in the form of man shared the poverty of mankind. The traditional offerings for purification were a lamb and a turtledove if the parents were rich, and two doves or two pigeons if they were poor. Thus the mother who brought the Lamb of God into the world had no lamb to offer—except the Lamb of God. God was presented in the temple at the age of forty days. About thirty years later He would claim the temple and use it as the symbol of His Body in which dwelt the fullness of Divinity. Here it was not the Firstborn of Mary alone Who was presented, but the Firstborn of the Eternal Father. As the Only Begotten of the Father, He was now presented as the Firstborn of a restored humanity. A new race began in Him.

The character of the man in the temple whose name was Simeon and who received the Child, is described simply as:

An upright man of careful observance

Who waited patiently for comfort to

Be brought to Israel.

LUKE 2:25

It was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit:

That he was not to meet death, until he

Had seen that Christ Whom the Lord had anointed.

LUKE 2:26

His words seem to imply that as soon as one sees Christ, the sting of death departs. The old man, taking the Child in his arms, exclaimed with joy:

Ruler of all, now dost thou let thy servant go in peace,

According to Thy word; for my own eyes

Have seen that saving power of Thine which Thou

Hast prepared in the sight of all nations.

This is the Light which shall give revelation

To the Gentiles, this is the glory

Of thy people Israel.

LUKE 2:29–29

Simeon was like a sentinel whom God had sent to watch for the Light. When the Light finally appeared, he was ready to sing his Nunc Dimittis. In a poor Child brought by poor people making a poor offering, Simeon discovered the riches of the world. As this old man held the Child in his arms, he was not like the aged of whom Horace speaks. He did not look back, but forward, and not only to the future of his own people but to the future of all the Gentiles of all the tribes and nations of the earth. An old man at the sunset of his own life spoke of the sunrise of the world; in the evening of life he told of the promise of a new day. He had seen the Messias before by faith; now his eyes could close, for there was nothing more beautiful to look upon. Some flowers open only in the evening. What he had seen now was “Salvation”—not salvation from poverty, but salvation from sin.

Simeon’s hymn was an act of adoration. There are three acts of adoration described in the early life of the Divine Child. The shepherds adored; Simeon, and Anna the prophetess, adored; and the heathen Magi adored. The song of Simeon was like a sunset in which a shadow heralds a substance. It was the first hymn by men in the life of Christ. Simeon, though addressing Mary and Joseph, did not address the Child. It would not have been fitting to give his blessing to the Son of the Highest. He blessed them; but he did not bless the Child.

After his hymn of praise he addressed himself only to the mother; Simeon knew that she, and not Joseph, was related to the Babe in his arms. He saw furthermore that there were sorrows in store for her, not for Joseph. Simeon said:

Behold, this Child is destined for the fall

And for the rise of many in Israel,

And for a sign that shall be contradicted.

LUKE 2:34

It was as if the whole history of the Divine Child were passing before the eyes of the old man. Every detail of that prophecy was to be fulfilled within the lifetime of the Babe. Here was a hard fact of the Cross, affirmed even before the tiny arms of the Babe could stretch themselves out straight enough to make the form of a cross. The Child would create terrible strife between good and evil, stripping the masks from each, thus provoking a terrible hatred. He would be at once a stumbling block, a sword that would divide evil from good, and a touchstone that would reveal the motives and dispositions of human hearts. Men would no longer be the same once they had heard His name and learned of His life. They would be compelled either to accept Him, or reject Him. About Him there would be no such thing as compromise: only acceptance or rejection, resurrection or death. He would, by His very nature, make men reveal their secret attitudes toward God. His mission would be not to put souls on trial, but to redeem them; and yet, because their souls were sinful, some men would detest His coming.

It would henceforth be His fate to encounter fanatical opposition from mankind even unto death itself, and this would involve Mary in cruel distress. The angel had told her, “Blessed art thou among women,” and Simeon was now telling her that in her blessedness she would be the Mater Dolorosa. One of the penalties of original sin was that a woman should bring forth her child in sorrow; Simeon was saying that she would continue to live in the sorrow of her Child. If He was to be the Man of Sorrows, she would be the Mother of Sorrows. An unsuffering Madonna to the suffering Christ would be a loveless Madonna. Since Christ loved mankind so much that He wanted to die to expiate its guilt, then He would also will that His mother should be wrapped in the swaddling bands of His own grief.

From the moment she heard Simeon’s words, she would never again lift the Child’s hands without seeing a shadow of nails on them; every sunset would be a blood-red image of His Passion. Simeon was throwing away the sheath that hid the future from human eyes, and letting the blade of the world’s sorrow flash in front of her eyes. Every pulse that she would feel in the tiny wrist would be like an echo of an oncoming hammer. If He was dedicated to salvation through suffering, so was she. No sooner was this young life launched than Simeon, like an old mariner, talked of shipwreck. No cup of the Father’s bitterness had yet come to the lips of the Babe, and yet a sword was shown to His mother.

The nearer Christ comes to a heart, the more it becomes conscious of its guilt; it will then either ask for His mercy and find peace, or else it will turn against Him because it is not yet ready to give up its sinfulness. Thus He will separate the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff. Man’s reaction to this Divine Presence will be the test: either it will call out all the opposition of egotistic natures, or else galvanize them into a regeneration and a resurrection.

Simeon was practically calling Him the “Divine Disturber,” Who would provoke human hearts either to good or evil. Once confronted with Him, they must subscribe either to light or darkness. Before everyone else they can be “broadminded” but His Presence reveals their hearts to be either fertile ground or hard rock. He cannot come to hearts without clarifying them and dividing them; once in His Presence, a heart discovers both its own thoughts about goodness and its own thoughts about God.

This could never be so if He were just a humanitarian teacher. Simeon knew this well, and he told Our Lord’s mother that her Son must suffer because His life would be so much opposed to the complacent maxims by which most men govern their lives. He would act on one soul in one way, and on another in another way, as the sun shines on wax and softens it, and shines on mud and hardens it. There is no difference in the sun, only in the objects on which it shines. As the Light of the World, He would be a joy to the good and the lovers of light; but He would be like a probing searchlight to those who were evil and preferred to live in darkness. The seed is the same, but the soil is different, and each soil will be judged by the way it reacts to the seed. The will of Christ to save is limited by the free reaction of each soul either to accept or reject. That was what Simeon meant by saying:

And so the thoughts of many hearts shall be made manifest.

LUKE 2:35

An Eastern fable tells of a magic mirror that remained clear when the good looked upon it, and became sullied when the impure gazed at it. Thus the owner could always tell the character of those who used it. Simeon was telling His mother that her Son would be like this mirror: men would either love or hate Him, according to their own reflections. A light falling on a sensitive photographic plate registers a chemical change that cannot be effaced. Simeon was saying that the Light of this Babe falling on Jew and Gentile would stamp on each the ineffaceable vestige of its presence.

Simeon also said that the Babe would disclose the true inner dispositions of men. He would test the thoughts of all who were to encounter Him. Pilate would temporize and then weaken; Herod would mock; Judas would lean to a kind of greedy social security; Nicodemus would sneak in darkness to find the Light; tax collectors would become honest; prostitutes, pure; rich young men would reject His poverty; prodigals would return home; Peter would repent; an Apostle would hang himself. From that day to this, He continues to be a sign to be contradicted. It was fitting, therefore, that He should die on a piece of wood in which one bar contradicted the other. The vertical bar of God’s will is negated by the horizontal bar of the contradicting human will. As the Circumcision pointed to the shedding of blood, so the Purification foretold His Crucifixion.

After saying that He was a sign to be contradicted, Simeon turned to the mother, adding:

As for thy own soul, it shall have a

Sword to pierce it.

LUKE 2:35

She was told that He would be rejected by the world, and with His Crucifixion there would be her transfixion. As the Child willed the Cross for Himself, so He willed the Sword of Sorrow for her. If He chose to be a Man of Sorrows, He also chose her to be a Mother of Sorrows! God does not always spare the good from grief. The Father spared not the Son, and the Son spared not the mother. With His Passion there must be her compassion. An unsuffering Christ Who did not freely pay the debt of human guilt would be reduced to the level of an ethical guide; and a mother who did not share in His sufferings would be unworthy of her great role.

Simeon not only unsheathed a sword; he also told her where Providence had destined it to be driven. Later on, the Child would say, “I came to bring the sword.” Simeon told her that she would feel it in her heart while her Son was hanging on the sign of contradiction and she was standing beneath it transfixed in grief. The spear that would physically pierce His heart would mystically be run into her own heart. The Babe came to die, not to live, for His name was “Savior.”

MAGI AND THE SLAUGHTER OFTHE INNOCENTS

Simeon had foretold that the Divine Babe would be a Light to the Gentiles. They were already on the march. At His birth there were the Magi, or the scientists of the East; at His death, there would be the Greeks, or the philosophers of the West. The Psalmist had foretold that the kings of the East would come to do homage to Emmanuel. Following a star, they came to Jerusalem to ask Herod where the King had been born

And thereupon certain wise men came out of the

East to Jerusalem, who asked,

Where is He that has been born,

The king of the Jews?

We have seen His star out in the east,

And we have come to worship Him.

MATTHEW 2:1–1

It was a star that led them. God spoke to the Gentiles through nature and philosophers; to the Jews, through prophecies. The time was ripe for the coming of the Messias and the whole world knew it. Though they were astrologers, the slight vestige of truth in their knowledge of the stars led them to the Star out of Jacob, as the “Unknown God” of the Athenians later on would be the occasion for Paul preaching to them the God Whom they knew not, but dimly desired. Though coming from a land that worshiped stars, they surrendered that religion as they fell down and worshiped Him Who made the stars. The Gentiles in fulfillment of the prophecies of Isaias and Jeremias “came to Him from the ends of the earth.” The Star, which disappeared during the interrogation of Herod, reappeared and finally stood over the place where the Child was born.

They, when they saw the star,

Were glad beyond measure;

And so, going into the dwelling, they

Found the Child there, with his mother Mary,

And fell down to worship Him; and,

Opening their store of treasures,

They of ered Him gifts, of gold and frankincense and myrrh.

MATTHEW 2:10–10

Isaias had prophesied:

A stream of camels thronging about thee,

Dromedaries from Madian and Epha,

Bringing all the men of Saba with their gifts

Of gold and incense,

Their cry of praise to the Lord!

ISAIAS 60:6

They brought three gifts: gold to honor His Kingship, frankincense to honor His Divinity, and myrrh to honor His Humanity which was destined for death. Myrrh was used at His burial. The crib and the Cross are related again, for there is myrrh at both.

When the Magi came from the East bringing gifts for the Babe, Herod the Great knew that the time had come for the birth of the King announced clearly to the Jews, and apprehended dimly in the aspirations of the Gentiles. But like all carnal-minded men, he lacked a spiritual sense, and therefore felt certain that the King would be a political one. He made inquiries as to where Christ was to be born. The chief priests and learned men told him, “At Bethlehem in Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet.” Herod said that he wanted to worship the Babe. But his actions proved that he really meant, “If this is the Messias, I must kill Him.”

Meanwhile, when he found that the wise men

Had played him false, Herod was angry

Beyond measure; he sent and made away with all

The male children in Bethlehem.

MATTHEW 2:16

Herod will forever be the model of those who make inquiries about religion, but who never act rightly on the knowledge they receive. Like train announcers, they know all the stations, but never travel. Head knowledge is worthless, unless accompanied by submission of the will and right action.

Totalitarians are fond of saying that Christianity is the enemy of the State—a euphemistic way of saying an enemy of themselves. Herod was the first totalitarian to sense this; he found Christ to be his enemy before He was two years old. Could a Babe born under the earth in a cave shake potentates and kings? Could He, Who as yet had no demos or people following Him, be a dangerous enemy of the demos-cratos or democracy, the rule of the people? No mere human baby could ever provoke such violence by a State. The Czar did not fear Stalin, the son of a cobbler, when he was two years old; he did not drive the cobbler’s son and his mother into exile for fear that he would one day be a menace to the world. Similarly, no swords hung over the head of the infant Hitler, nor did the government move against Mao Tsetung while he was still in swaddling clothes because it feared that he would some day deliver China to the murderous sickle. Why then were the soldiers summoned against this Infant? It must surely have been because those who possess the spirit of the world conceal an instinctive hatred and jealousy of God Who reigns over human hearts. The hatred the second Herod would show Christ at His death had its prologue in the hatred of his father, Herod the Great, for Christ as a Babe.

Herod was fearful that He Who came to bring a heavenly crown would steal away his own tinsel one. He pretended that he wanted to bring gifts, but the only gift he wanted to bring was death. Wicked men sometimes hide their evil designs under an appearance of religion: “I am a religious man, but….” Men can make inquiries about Christ for two reasons, either to worship or to harm. Some would even make use of religion for their evil designs, as Herod made use of the Wise Men. Inquiries about religion do not produce the same results in all hearts. What men ask about Divinity is never as important as why they ask it.

Before Christ was two years of age, there was a shedding of blood for His sake. It was the first attempt on His life. A sword for the Babe; stones for the Man; the Cross at the end. That was how His own received Him. Bethlehem was the dawn of Calvary. The law of sacrifice that would wind itself around Him and His Apostles, and around so many of His followers for centuries to come, began its work by snatching these young lives which are so happily commemorated in the Feast of the Holy Innocents. An upended cross for Peter, a push from a steeple for James, a knife for Bartholomew, a cauldron of oil followed by long waiting for John, a sword for Paul, and many swords for the innocent babies of Bethlehem. “The world will hate you,” Christ promised all those who were signed with His seal. These Innocents died for the King Whom they had never known. Like little lambs, they died for the sake of the Lamb, the prototypes of a long procession of martyrs—these children who never struggled, but were crowned. In the Circumcision He shed His own Blood; now His coming heralds the shedding of the blood of others for His sake. As circumcision was the mark of the Old Law, so persecution would be the mark of the New Law. “For My name’s sake,” He told His Apostles they would be hated. All things around Him speak of His death, for that was the purpose of His coming. The very entrance door over the stable where He was born was marked with blood, as was the threshold of the Jews in Egypt. Innocent lambs in the Passover bled for Him in centuries past; now innocent children without spot, little human lambs, bled for Him.

But God warned the Wise Men not to return to Herod,

So they returned to their own country

By a different way.

MATTHEW 2:12

No one who ever meets Christ with a good will returns the same way as he came. Baffled in his design to kill the Divine, the enraged tyrant ordered the indiscriminate slaughter of all male children under two years of age. There are more ways than one of practicing birth control.

Mary was already prepared for a Cross in the life of her Babe, but Joseph, moving on a lower level of awareness, needed the revelation of an angel, telling him to take the Child and His mother into Egypt.

Rise up, take with thee the Child

And His mother, and flee to Egypt;

There remain, until I give thee word.

For Herod will soon be making search for the child,

To destroy Him.

He rose up, therefore,

While it was still night, and took the child

And His mother with Him,

And withdrew into Egypt, where he

Remained until the death of Herod.

MATTHEW 2:13

Exile was to be the lot of the Savior, otherwise the millions of exiles from persecuted lands would be without a God Who understood the agony of homelessness and frantic flight. By His Presence in Egypt, the Infant Savior consecrated a land that had been the traditional enemy of His own people, and thus gave hope to other lands which would later reject Him. The Exodus was reversed, as the Divine Child made Egypt His temporary home. Mary now sang as Miriam had done, while a second Joseph guarded the Living Bread for which human hearts were starving. The murder of the Innocents by Herod recalls Pharaoh’s slaughter of the Hebrew children; and what happened when Herod died recalled the original Exodus. When Herod the Great died, an angel charted the course of Joseph, bidding him to return to Galilee. He came and settled there in fulfillment of what had been said by the prophets, “He shall be a Nazarene.”

And now when all had been done that the

Law of the Lord required,

They returned to Galilee, and to their

Own town of Nazareth.

LUKE 2:39

The term “Nazarene” signified contempt. The little village was off the main roads at the foot of the mountains; nestling in a cup of hills, it was out of reach of the merchants of Greece, the legions of Rome, and the journeys of the sophisticated. It is not mentioned in ancient geographies. It deserved its name, for it was just a “netzer,” a sprout that grows on the stump of a tree. Centuries before, Isaias had foretold that a “branch,” or “sprout,” or “netzer,” would grow out of the roots of the country; it would seem to be of little value and many would despise it, but it would ultimately have dominion over the earth. The fact that Christ took up His residence in a despised village was a prefigurement of the obscurity and ignominy that would ever plague Him and His followers. The name “Nazareth” would be nailed over His Head on the “sign of contradiction” as a scornful repudiation of His claims. Before that, when Philip told Nathanael:

We have discovered who it was Moses wrote of in his Law,

And the prophets too;

It is Jesus, the Son of Joseph, from Nazareth.

JOHN 1:45

Nathanael would retort:

Can anything good come from Nazareth?

JOHN 1:46

The big cities are sometimes thought to contain all the wisdom, while the little towns are looked upon as backward and unprogressive. Christ chose the insignificant Bethlehem for the glory of His birth; the ridiculed Nazareth for His youth; but the glorious, cosmopolitan Jerusalem for the ignominy of His death. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” is but the prelude to “Can anything redemptive come from a man who dies on a cross?”

Nazareth would be a place of humiliation for Him, a training ground for Golgotha. Nazareth was in Galilee, and the whole of Galilee was a despised region in the eyes of the more cultured people of Judea. Galilean speech was supposed to be crude and rude, so much so that when Peter denied Our Lord, the maidservant reminded him that his speech betrayed him; he had been with the Galilean. No one would ever look to Galilee, therefore, for a teacher; and yet the Light of the World was the Galilean. God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the self-wise and proud. Nathanael merely gave expression to an evil prejudice probably as old as humanity itself; people and their power to teach are judged by the places whence they come. Worldly wisdom comes from where we expect it, in the bestsellers, the “standard brands” and the universities. Divine Wisdom comes from the unsuspected quarters, which the world holds in derision. The ignominy of Nazareth would hang about Him later on. His hearers would taunt:

How does this man know how to read?

He has never studied.

JOHN 7:15

While this was a reluctant tribute to His learning, it was also a sneer at His “backwoods” village…. How did He know? They did not suspect the true answer; namely, that in addition to the knowledge of His human intellect, He had a Wisdom that was not schooltaught, nor self-taught, nor even God-taught, in the sense in which the prophets were God-taught. He learned from His mother and the village synagogue; but the secrets of His knowledge must be found in His oneness with the Heavenly Father.

OBEDIENCE AND THE CHILD AT THE TEMPLE

On the first Passover after Jesus had passed His twelfth year, His parents took Him to Jerusalem with the other men of Nazareth. The Law required the attendance of all Jewish men at the three great feasts: Passover, Pentecost, and the Tabernacles. When the Divine Child went up to the temple, He probably followed as usual all the injunctions of the Jewish Law. At three, He had been given a tasseled garment; at five, He learned under His mother’s direction portions of the Law which were written out on scrolls; at twelve, He began to wear phylacteries, which the Jews always put on for the recital of daily prayer. It took several days to travel the narrow roads between Nazareth and the Holy City. Like all pilgrims, the Holy Family probably chanted the processional Psalms en route, Psalm 121 being sung when the walls of the temple first came in sight.

Joseph must have gone to the temple to kill the Paschal lamb. Since the Child was of legal age for the temple ceremonies, He must have watched the lamb’s blood pour forth from the wound, to be scattered at the foot of the altar in the four directions of the earth. The Cross was once more before His eyes. The Child would also have seen the carcass of the lamb being prepared for supper. This was done, according to the Law, by running two skewers of wood through the body, one through the breast, and the other through the forelegs, so that the lamb had the appearance of being on a cross.

After fulfilling the rites, the men and women left in separate caravans, to meet again at night. But the Boy Jesus, unknown to His parents, stayed behind in Jerusalem. They, thinking that He was among their traveling companions, had gone a day’s journey before they missed Him. It was thus that Jesus was “lost” for three days. All through His infancy there was talk of “contradiction,” “swords,” “no room,” “exile,” “slaughter,” and now there was “loss.” In those three days, Mary came to know one of the effects of sin, namely, the loss of God. Though she was without sin, nevertheless she knew the fears and the loneliness, the darkness and the isolation which every sinner experiences when he loses God. It was a kind of glorified hide-and-seek. He was hers; that was why she sought Him. He was on the business of redemption; that was why He left her and went to the temple. She had her dark night of the body in Egypt; she would now have her dark night of the soul in Jerusalem. Mothers must be trained to bear crosses. Not only her body, but also her soul would have to pay dearly for the privilege of being His mother. She would later suffer another three-day loss from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. This first loss was part of her preparation.

Christ is always found in unexpected places; in a manger by the Wise Men; in a small town, despised even by the Apostles. His parents now found Him unexpectedly in the temple. It was three days before they found Him, just as it would be the third day before Mary would find Him again after Calvary. The temple had great fascination for Him, since it was the little figure or model of heaven; the Father’s house was His home and in it He felt at home.

There was a school in the temple, in which a number of Rabbis taught; the gentle Hillel was perhaps still alive and may have been present in the temple to join in the discussion of the Divine Child. Hillel’s son, Rabbi Simeon and his even greater grandson, Gamaliel, the future teacher of St. Paul, may have been of the number—although Gamaliel at that time would have been only about the same age as the Divine Child. Annas had just been appointed high priest, and certainly he must have heard about the Divine Child, if he were not actually present.

It was in this school of Rabbis that Mary and Joseph found Him.

He was sitting in the Temple

In the midst of those who taught there,

Listening to them and asking them questions;

And all those who heard Him were in amazement

At His quick understanding and at the answers that He gave.

LUKE 2:47–47

The fact that He was sitting in the midst of the doctors would indicate that they received Him not just as a learner, but as a professor. There is a restraint manifested in the Gospel concerning this scene which contrasts strongly with certain apocryphal writings. The Gospel of Thomas, which belongs to the second century and which is not an accredited gospel, describes Our Lord on this occasion as a professor. An Arabic gospel of a later period actually makes the instructions touch on metaphysics and astronomy. The revealed Gospels, however, always show powerful restraint to the point of understatement in describing the life of Our Lord.

Seeing Him there, they were full of wonder.

LUKE 2:48

They were probably astonished because of the learning which He displayed. The Psalmist had suggested that He had more understanding than His teachers because the testimonies of God were His study. The astonishment may also have derived from the fact that it is sometimes difficult for a mother to realize that a son grows quickly into man’s estate and asserts his own individual purpose in life.

In a land where the authority of the father was supreme, it was not Joseph the foster father, but Mary, who spoke:

My Son, why hast Thou treated us so?

Think what anguish of mind Thy father and I

Have endured, searching for Thee.

LUKE 2:48

The Virgin Birth was implied in her questioning. Her question implied that the emphasis was more on the fact that He was her Son than upon the fact that He was also the Son of God. This distinction is further underlined by the fact that she added a note about fatherhood, saying, “Thy father and I.”

The Divine Child answered by making a distinction between the one whom He honored as a father on earth and the Eternal Father. This answer affirmed a parting of the ways; it did not diminish the filial duty that He owed to Mary and Joseph, for He became immediately subject to them again, but it decisively put them in a second place.

These are the first recorded words of Jesus in the Gospels, and they are in the form of a question:

What reason had you to search for Me?

Could you not tell that I must needs

Be in the place which belongs to My Father?

LUKE 2:49

This is an evident reference to Mary’s words “Thy father and I.” When He said that His mother should have known He was about His Father’s business, He was evidently referring to what she had learned at the Annunciation when the Angel said to her:

The Holy Spirit will come upon thee,

And the power of the Most High will overshadow thee,

Thus the holy of spring of thine shall be

Known for the Son of God.

LUKE 1:35

His relationship with His own mother He would take up again at the Marriage Feast of Cana; here He established the nature of His relationship to His foster father. He disowned physical paternity, by claiming His Divine paternity, that of His Heavenly Father. At Cana He would say to His mother:

Woman, why dost thou trouble Me with that?

JOHN 2:4

Then He was implying a motherhood other than that of the flesh, as now He implied a fatherhood other than that which was exercised by Joseph. Never again does Joseph appear in the Gospels.

In the temple, Our Lord alienated Himself from the claim of His foster father, just as later at Cana He would alienate Himself from the claims of His mother. His supreme business was to be a Savior; but for the moment that included obedience to His earthly guardians. The Child was implying that there was something in history which ought to be known to His mother and His foster father, something that justified His being where He was, and forbade their anxiety about Him. It was because of that that He asked, “What reason had you to search for Me?” And added, “Could you not tell that I must needs be in the place which belongs to My Father?” He was saying that He must be in the temple of His own Father. This was the first of many “musts” that Our Blessed Lord uttered during His life to indicate that He was under a mandate, under obedience to be a ransom. The very fact that He associated the word “must” with His Heavenly Father meant that Sonship implied obedience. At the age of twelve, He was girding Himself for something that would be irksome to His human nature, but His whole nature was bent on the accomplishment of a Divine “must.”

If there is anything that dispels the false assumption that His consciousness of a union with the Father developed gradually, it is this text in which He, as a Boy of twelve, hinted at His mysterious origin and at the peculiar foster character of His father, as well as at His perfectly conscious unity with the Godhead; the Divine constraints which swayed His life were already profoundly realized by Him. He often used the word “must.”

I must preach the Kingdom of God.

I must abide in thy house.

I must do the works of Him Who sent Me.

The Son of Man must suffer many things.

The Son of Man must be lifted up.

The Son of Man must suffer to enter into His glory.

The Son of Man must rise again.

He always talked as one under orders. Free from the compulsions of heredity, circumstances or family, this Boy of twelve said that He was bound by heaven’s commission. Therefore, He asked why they had searched for Him. He was surprised that any explanation other than that He was obeying His Father’s will should even have occurred to them. The imperative of Divine Love was manifested in His “I must.” There was no fundamental difference between the Boy in the temple and the Man Who was to say that He “must be lifted up” on the Cross. He would have to die because He wanted to save. His filial obedience to His Father coincided with His pity for men. It would not be a tragedy, for the “Son of Man must rise again after three days.” His plan was gradually revealed to the minds of men; but there was no gradual revelation in His mind, no new understanding, of why He had come.

His Father’s business at the end of the three days in the temple was no different from His Father’s business at the end of three days in the grave. Like all other incidents in His infancy, this one bore witness to the Mission of the Cross. All men are born to live; He was born to do the Father’s business, which was to die, and thereby to save. These first recorded words seem like the buds of a passion flower. On Easter Sunday Mary would find Him again in the temple—the temple of His glorified Body.

The sword was already coming to Mary before the Cross had come to her Son, for she was already feeling the cutting separation. On the Cross, He would, in His human nature, utter the cry of His greatest agony, “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” But Mary uttered it while He was still a Boy, lost in the temple. The most penetrating sorrows of the soul are those which God imposes, as Jesus imposed this one on His mother. Creatures can hurt one another only on the outside, but God’s purifying flame can enter their souls like a two-edged sword. Both His natures were teaching her to prepare her for His sorrowful life: His human nature by hiding the loveliness of His Face from her during those three days, better called three nights; His Divine nature by proclaiming that the Father had sent Him to earth to do heaven’s business, which was to open it to mankind by paying the debt of mankind’s sins.

NAZARETH

This is the only incident of His boyhood told in the Scriptures. For the next eighteen years, He stayed in Nazareth.

He went down with them on their journey to Nazareth,

And lived there in subjection to them,

While His mother kept in her heart the memory of all this.

And so Jesus advanced in wisdom with the years

And in favor both with God and with men.

LUKE 2:51

If there ever was a Son Who might have been expected to claim personal independence (especially after His powerful affirmation in the temple), it was He. And yet to sanctify and exemplify human obedience, and to make up for the disobedience of men, He lived under a humble roof, obedient to His parents. For eighteen uneventful years He fixed the flat roofs of Nazarene homes and mended the wagons of the farmers. Every mean and lowly task was part of the Father’s business. Human development of the God-man unfolded in the village so naturally that not even the townspeople were conscious of the greatness of Him Who dwelled in their midst. It was indeed a going “down” in the sense that it was a self-denial and a self-abnegation for Him to submit Himself to His own creatures. He evidently followed the trade of a carpenter, for eighteen years later, the townspeople were to ask:

Is not this the carpenter, the Son of Mary?

MARK 6:3

Justin Martyr, basing himself on tradition, says that during this time Our Lord made plows and yokes, and taught men righteousness through the products of His peaceful toil.

The growth in wisdom that is spoken of in the Divine Child was not, as we have seen, a growth in His consciousness of Divinity. Inasmuch as He was a man, He was subject to all the laws which regulate human growth; having a human intellect and a human will, it was natural for these faculties to unfold in a human way. In the development of His experimental knowledge, the influence of His environment is to be particularly noted. Many of the comparisons which He used in parables were borrowed from the world in which He had lived. It was through the influence of His parents that He learned the common language of Aramaic, and, without doubt, also the liturgical language of Hebrew. Very likely, He learned Greek since it was spoken to some extent in Galilee and was also apparently the language of at least two of His relatives, James the Minor and Jude, who later wrote their Epistles in Greek.

He also learned the trade of carpentry which involved a further development of the human intellect. Later on, He was accorded the title of Rabbi because of His profound knowledge of the Scriptures and the Law. He often introduced discussions with the words, “Have you not read,” thus demonstrating His knowledge of the Scriptures. His family, the synagogue, His surroundings, nature itself—all contributed a little to His human intellect and will. He had both a human intellect and a human will. Without the first, He could not have grown in human experimental knowledge; without the second, He could not have been obedient to a higher will. Furthermore, both were essential to Him as man. He had created knowledge as man; as God, He went beyond human knowledge. This is what John describes as the “Word,” which signifies the Wisdom or the Thought or the Intelligence of God.

God had the Word abiding with Him

And the Word was God…

It was through Him that all things

Came into being, and without Him

Came nothing that has come to be…

And the Word was made flesh

And came to dwell among us.

JOHN 1:1, 3, 14

The intimate relations which He had with His Father in heaven were not just those that came from prayer and meditation; these any human being may establish. They came rather from the identity of nature with the Godhead.

Inasmuch as the most general sin of mankind is pride or the exaltation of the ego, it was fitting that in atoning for that pride, Christ should practice obedience. He was not like one who is obedient for the sake of a reward, or in order to build up his character for the future; rather, being the Son, He already enjoyed the love of the Father to the full. It was out of this very fullness that there flowed a childlike surrender to His Father’s will. He gave this as the reason for His surrender to the Cross. Within an hour or so before going into His Agony in the Garden, He would say:

The world must be convinced that I love the Father,

And act only as the Father has commanded Me to act.

JOHN 14:30–30

The only acts of Christ’s childhood which are recorded are acts of obedience— obedience to His Heavenly Father and to His earthly parents. The foundation of obedience to man, He taught, is obedience to God. The elders who serve not God find that the young serve them not. His whole life was submission. He submitted to John’s baptism, though He did not need it; He submitted to the temple tax, though as the Son of the Father, He was exempt from it; and He bade His own followers to submit to Caesar. Calvary cast its shadow over Bethlehem; so now it darkened the obedient years at Nazareth. In being subject to creatures, though He was God, He prepared Himself for that final obedience—obedience to the humiliation of the Cross.

For the next eighteen years, after the three-day loss, He Who had made the universe played the role of a village carpenter, a maker in wood. The familiar nails and crossbeams in the shop would later on become the instruments of His own torture; and He would Himself be hammered to a tree. One wonders why this long preparation for such a brief ministry of three years. The reason might very well be that He waited until the human nature which He had assumed had grown in age to full perfection, that He might then offer the perfect sacrifice to His Heavenly Father. The farmer waits until the wheat is ripe before cutting it and subjecting it to the mill. So He would wait until His human nature had reached its most perfect proportions and its peak of loveliness, before surrendering it to the hammer of the crucifiers and the sickle of those who would cut down the Living Bread of Heaven. The newborn lamb was never offered in sacrifice, nor is the first blush of the rose cut to pay tribute to a friend. Each thing has its hour of perfection. Since He was the Lamb that could set the hour for His own sacrifice, since He was the Rose that could choose the moment of its cutting. He waited patiently, humbly and obediently, while He grew in age and grace and wisdom before God and man. Then He would say: “This is your Hour.” Thus the choicest wheat and the reddest wine would become the worthiest elements of sacrifice.

JOHN THE BAPTIST

The awful silence of thirty years was interrupted only by the brief scene in the temple. The time was now coming to move from privacy to publicity. Because the event was to be world-shaking, Luke connects the appearance of the herald of Our Lord, John the Baptist, with the reign of the tyrant Tiberius, the ruler of Rome. Pliny, who was later on to write as a Roman historian about Christ, was now a child of four; Vespasian, who later on would conquer Jerusalem with his son Titus, was nineteen. One of the very important marriages in Rome at that time was that of the daughter of Germanicus, who nine years later was to give birth to the great persecuter of Christ’s followers, Nero. In the midst of this relative Roman peace:

The word of God came upon John,

The son of Zachary, in the desert.

LUKE 3:2

John was living in solitude in the desert, clothed in camel’s hair with a leather girdle about his loins. His food consisted of locusts and wild honey. His costume was probably meant to resemble that of Elias, in whose spirit John was to go before Christ. Since he preached mortification, he practiced it also. If he was to prepare for Christ, he must also evoke a penitent consciousness of sin. John was a severe ascetic, moved by a deep conviction of sin in the world. The heart of his message to soldiers, public officials, farmers, and anyone else who would listen was “Repent.” The first note of warning in the New Testament tells all men to change. The Sadducees must lay aside their worldliness, the Pharisees their hypocrisy and self-righteousness; all who come to Christ must repent.

With the country under a Roman yoke, it would have been a more certain route to popularity for John to promise that the One Who was to come, the One Whom he announced, would be a political liberator. That would have been the way of men; but instead of a call to arms, John gave a call to reparation for sin. And those who claim descent from Abraham must not glory in it, because if God willed, He could raise up children of Abraham from the very stones.

Who was it that taught you, brood of vipers,

To flee from the vengeance that draws near?

Come then, yield the acceptable fruit of repentance;

Do not think to say, we have Abraham for our father;

I tell you, God has power to raise up children

To Abraham out of these very stones.

LUKE 3:7–7

Many centuries before, Isaias had foretold that the Messias would be preceded by a messenger.

Behold, I am sending before thy face that angel of mine

Who is to prepare thy way before Thee;

There is a voice of one crying in the wilderness,

Prepare the way of the Lord,

Straighten out His paths.

MARK 1:2–2

About three hundred years after Isaias, the prophet Malachias prophesied that the herald Isaias had promised he would come in the spirit of Elias.

I will send Elias to be your prophet.

MALACHIAS 4:5–5

Now, after centuries had whirled away into space, there appeared in the wilderness this great man leading the same kind of life as Elias.

In all countries, when the head of a government wishes to visit another government, he sends messengers “before his face.” So, John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way of Christ, to announce the conditions of His reign and government. John, despite the prophecies that were made about him, disclaimed that he was the Messias, and said that he was only:

The voice of one crying in the wilderness.

JOHN 1:23

Even before he met the Messias, Who was his own cousin, he announced the superiority of Christ:

One is to come after me Who is mightier than I,

So that I am not worthy to bend down

And untie the strap of His shoes.

MARK 1:7–7

John considered himself unworthy to untie the shoes of Our Lord, but Our Lord would surpass him in humility as He would wash the feet of the Apostles. The greatness of John consisted in the fact that to him was given the privilege of running before the chariot of the King and saying, “Christ has come.”

John used symbols as well as words. The chief symbol of the washing away of sin was a cleansing by water. John had been baptizing in the Jordan, as a token of repentance, but he knew that his baptism did not regenerate or quicken the dead soul. That is why he made a contrast between his baptism and the baptism that later on Christ Himself would confer; speaking of the latter, he said:

He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.

MATTHEW 3:12

The day on which John and Jesus met in the Jordan, there awakened in John the deepest and most reverent humility. John felt the need of a Redeemer, but when Our Lord asked him to baptize Him, John was reluctant to do so. John immediately recognized the incongruity of submitting Our Lord to a rite which professed repentance and promised cleansing:

It is I, he said,

That ought to be baptized by Thee,

And dost Thou come to me instead?

MATTHEW 3:14

How could he baptize One Who had no sin? His refusal to baptize Jesus was recognition of His sinlessness.

But Jesus answered, Let it be so for the present;

It is well that we should thus fulfill all due observance.

MATTHEW 3:15

The object of His baptism was the same as the object of His birth, namely, to identify Himself with sinful humanity. Had not Isaias foretold that He would be “numbered with the transgressors?” In effect, Our Lord was saying, “Suffer this to be done; it does not seem fitting to you, but in reality, it is in complete harmony with the purpose of My coming.” Christ was not being this as a private Person but as a representative of sinful humanity, though Himself without sin.

Every Israelite who came to John made a confession of his sins. It is evident that Our Blessed Lord did not make any such confession, and John himself admitted that He had no need of it. He had no sin to repent of and no sin to be washed away. But He was identifying Himself with sinners all the same. When He went down into the river Jordan to be baptized, He made Himself one with sinners. The innocent can share the burdens of the guilty. If a husband is guilty of a crime, it is pointless to tell his wife not to worry about it, or that it is no concern of hers. It is equally absurd to say that Our Lord should not have been baptized because He had no personal guilt. If He was to be identified with humanity, so much so as to call Himself the “Son of Man,” then He had to share the guilt of humanity. And this was the meaning of the baptism by John.

Many years before, He had said that He must be about His Father’s business; now He was revealing what His Father’s business was: the salvation of mankind. He was expressing His relationship to His people, on whose behalf He had been sent. In the temple at the age of twelve, it had been His origin that He emphasized; now in the Jordan, it was the nature of His mission. In the temple He had spoken of His Divine mandate. Under the cleansing hands of John, He made clear His oneness with humanity.

Later on, Our Blessed Lord would say:

The law and the prophets lasted until John’s time.

LUKE 16:16

He meant that long centuries had borne faithful witness to the coming of the Messias, but now a new page was turned, a new chapter written. From now on, He was to be merged with the sinful population. He was committed henceforth to live among, and minister unto, the victims of sin; to be betrayed into the hands of sinners and to be accused of sin though He knew no sin. As in His infancy He was circumcised, as if His nature were sinful, so now He was baptized, although He had no need of purification.

There were three rites in the Old Testament which were “baptisms” of sorts. First was a “baptism” of water. Moses brought Aaron and his son to the doors of the tabernacle and washed them with water. This was followed by a “baptism” of oil, when Moses poured oil upon Aaron’s head in order to sanctify him. The final “baptism” was one of blood. Moses took the blood of the ram of consecration and put it upon Aaron’s right ear and upon the thumb of his right hand and upon the great toe of his right foot. This ritual implied a gradual consecration. These baptisms would have their counterpart in the Jordan, the Transfiguration, and Calvary.

The baptism of Jordan was a prelude to the baptism of which He would later speak, the baptism of His Passion. Twice afterward did He refer to His baptism. The first time was when James and John asked Him if they could sit on either side of Him in His Kingdom. In answer, He asked them if they were ready to be baptized with the baptism which He was going to receive. Thus His baptism of water looked forward to His baptism of blood. The Jordan flowed into the red rivers of Calvary. The second time He referred to His baptism was when He said to His Apostles:

There is a baptism I must be baptized with,

And how impatient am I for its accomplishment.

LUKE 12:50

In the waters of the Jordan He was identified with sinners; in the baptism of His Death, He would bear the full burden of their guilt. In the Old Testament, the Psalmist speaks of “entering into deep water” as a symbol of suffering which is manifestly the same imagery. There was a fitness in describing agony and death as a kind of baptism.

The Cross must have been looming up in His thoughts now with increasing vividness. It was no afterthought in His mind. He was temporarily immersed in the waters of the Jordan only to emerge again. So would He be immersed by the death on the Cross and the burial in the tomb, only to emerge triumphantly in the Resurrection. He had proclaimed His mission from the Father at the age of twelve; now He was preparing Himself for oblation.

So Jesus was baptized, and as He came straight up out of the water,

Suddenly heaven was opened,

And He saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove

And resting upon Him.

And with that, a voice came from heaven, which said,

This is My Beloved Son,

In Whom I am well pleased.

MATTHEW 3:16

The sacred humanity of Christ was the connecting link between heaven and earth. The voice from heaven which declared Him to be the Beloved Son of the Eternal Father was not announcing a new fact or a new Sonship of Our Blessed Lord. It was merely making a solemn declaration of that Sonship, which had existed from all eternity, but which was now beginning to manifest itself publicly as Mediator between God and man. The Father’s good pleasure, in the original Greek, is recorded in the aorist tense, to denote the eternal act of loving contemplation with which the Father regards the Son.

The Christ Who came out of the water, as the earth had come out of the water at creation and after the Flood, as Moses and his people had come out of the waters of the Red Sea, was now glorified by the Holy Spirit appearing in the form of a Dove. The Spirit of God never appears in the figure of a Dove anywhere save here. The Book of Leviticus mentions offerings which were made according to the economic and social position of the giver. A man who could afford it would bring a bullock, and a poorer man would offer a lamb; but the poorest of all had the privilege of bringing doves. When the mother of Our Lord brought Him to the temple, her offering was a dove. The dove was the symbol of gentleness and peacefulness, but above all it was the type of sacrifice possible to the lowliest people. Whenever a Hebrew thought of a lamb or a dove, he immediately thought of a sacrifice for sin. Therefore, the Spirit descending upon Our Lord was for them a symbol of submission to sacrifice. Christ had already united Himself symbolically with man in baptism, in anticipation of His submergence into the waters of suffering; but now He was also crowned, dedicated, and consecrated to that sacrifice through the coming of the Spirit. The waters of the Jordan united Him with men, the Spirit crowned Him and dedicated Him to sacrifice, and the Voice attested that His sacrifice would be pleasing to the Eternal Father.

The seeds of the doctrine of the Trinity which were planted in the Old Testament began here to unfold. They would become clearer as time went on: the Father; the Creator, the Son, the Redeemer; and the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier. The very words the Father spoke here, “Thou art My Son,” had been prophetically addressed to the Messias a thousand years before, in the second psalm.

Thou art My Son, I have begotten Thee this day.

PSALM 2:7

Our Blessed Lord would tell Nicodemus later on:

Believe Me, no man can enter into the kingdom of God

Unless birth come to him from water,

And from the Holy Spirit.

JOHN 3:5, 6

The baptism in the Jordan closed Our Lord’s private life and began His public ministry. He had gone down into the water known to most men only as the son of Mary; He came out ready to reveal Himself as what He had been from all eternity, the Son of God. He was the Son of God in the likeness of man in all things, save sin. The Spirit was anointing Him not just for teaching, but for redeeming

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