The muddy condition of the Jordan and the human dimension of Jesus

(Mt 3:13-17; Mk 1:7-11; Lk 3:21-22; Jn 1:30-34)

The river Jordan was never navigable; it simply marked a border.

In the mentality of the time, between other people's land and the sacred sphere of freedom: here a concrete boundary of the "Incarnation".

Let us try to explore this in more detail.

Popular preaching on the subject of the Baptism of the Lord was burdened with a bark of clichés [here and there perhaps insuperable] that prevented any maturation of widespread beliefs, which were still stagnant.

In this way, Jesus has hastily found himself placed behind the clouds, and today it is difficult to explain what he has in common with our life, which is often raw, conditioned by fatigue, trial and error, and research.

Although fundamental for the fruitful interiorization of a journey that moves away from generically (sometimes authentically) devotional banalities, from the ambo and in catechesis we are still forced to dribble the true meaning of the event.

Indeed, the Baptism of the Lord has created embarrassment and interpretative confusion since the first generations of believers.

Let us deal with a few considerations that recover the meaning of this historical fact - for us, it could be like a sunshine inside - with which the liturgy completes the journey of the Christmas season.

Jesus, in search of and eager to sift through the best teaching of his time, enters the school of the Baptist as a pupil.

For this reason he is baptised by John - and through this rite of entry, joined with other ordinary followers.

It may seem incredible, but the Master and Lord recognised himself as curious, imperfect, ignorant, incomplete; in need of evolution. Not to become 'better' and stronger, but to learn to look otherwise.

In that highly committed but serious, edgy, often one-sided environment, He understood the true greatness of Revelation.

In short, the Subject of the spiritual journey is divine Life, with all its bearing, which providentially pours forth and moves varied situations.

It comes to broaden horizons; not to bind us to particular ways of understanding and wanting.

We already know: it is not the ego that thinks and plans that can draw us into the experience of integral, all-embracing Happiness; of authentic, solid love.

The Kingdom is anything but: Complete. It is inclusive of what the sterilised, or fashionable, and common opinion does not 'like'.

It offers an earthly energy that is as valuable as the ideal, heavenly one.

Heaven cannot be prepared or even set up: it would become a projection, a conditioned reflex, an external tower like Babel.

Rather, one must welcome it, host it within oneself.

Then another kind of asceticism opens up, with fewer expectations of "perfection". A path that disconcerts, and that the divine impulse within us - concrete - demands of us.

We will know the Joy of Living, we will feel it flowing within; only then will we be fulfilled.

Marrying the shadow side, which will become our Perfume.

Achievements that rely on genius and muscle, first unnerving, then frustrating; then blocking the growth of the innate universe.

Artifices external to the soul extinguish personally inspired novelty, the very Source of being and enthusiasm.

Indeed, the one-sided religious man remains in malaise; he withers, because he does not take the spousal, creative leap of the adventure of Faith.

He becomes a photograph or a photocopy.

Then it stagnates in the depressing realisation of the difference between expected results and concrete facts.

Paradoxically, it centres the ways on itself - but does not rest its gaze 'in' its essence.

It obeys perhaps, but does not listen. Thus it allows itself to be vampirised by mannerisms and epidermal stylistic features.

Having lost the sense, also relational, of its unrepeatable Unicum - it measures all its inability to perceive, elaborate, realise mysterious designs that guide dreams and resources to fullness.

He loses all energy by making induced resolutions, full of artifice; out of scale.

He gives himself goals that make him opinionated, sour, formal, external - simply because those overarching goals do not concern him.

Meanwhile, the perfect, stressful discipline he imposes on himself, as if he were the Protagonist, takes away the joy of encountering superior talents.

He will always miss the thrill of living intensely what (fuller) reality offers.

Thus he does not extract from his own Mine all at hand those abilities that realise the personal Mission.

He does not even realise it - caught up in hyperbolic ideas and great disciplines that are absolutely derivative, paradoxically trivial [which can finally only dismantle its peaks and rarity]. 

He always has his eye on the past or on fashions; on the common thought, that of the situation, of the authorities, of others, of the environment he frequents, of the surroundings - which he tarnishes, or deviates.

And it places the focus only on what is normally considered 'should be' - according to established, dampening ethics, or utopias à la page, disembodied.

Inside the vortex of insuperable models, he never understands what God is really calling him to, even in disturbances.

Finally, every discrepancy between what is given and what is obtained destroys the atypicality of Hope itself, triggering an inexorable sadness, or the useless individual and ecclesial trance.

The adult Jesus who allows himself to be immersed in the waters of the Jordan is an icon of a proposal that enhances the conspicuously murky swamps of our condition.

The Lord not only grasps the possibilities, but even makes the waters cheerful [so in all oriental icons, which accentuate elegant volutes].

But the question remains. How can our Lord come alongside an indistinct crowd of sinners and stragglers seeking redemption?

In each of them Jesus saw a talent emerge.

And we are at the lowest point on earth - 400 metres below sea level.

It is precisely this leap of quality that distinguishes sophisticated idealism or simplistic religiosity - even cloaked in great things - from any quest for Faith.

The Son reveals divine Life, which bursts forth shattering expectations.

It unceasingly manifests itself as a friend. Unconscious face that does not destroy but draws near, to bring out the stifled possibilities.

Because God does not crush, he does not humiliate our hidden inclinations and resources, nor does he add unbearable burdens.

He is not a King of the submissive and weary.

He enters into a muddy reality, for it is filled with points of tension.

Thus he prepares our developments, and desires to grow - producing paths though interrupted, but finally the unexpected flower.

Now, at last, it is possible for each one to respond in a simple way to the spousal invitation: 'Do you want to unite your life to Mine?

Only that which is dehumanising does not concern our eternal side.

Any divine Gift passes through the 'flesh': the condition of the person as he is, even in the concreteness of his minimal or insecure actions.

The genuine rawness of our investigation of the true, the good and the beautiful passes - as in Jesus - through paths to be corrected over time, trial and error.

There is nothing wrong with that: only diamonds do not sprout.

Even Leonardo Da Vinci wrote that 'all our convictions begin with feelings. Not from crystalline, self-contained thoughts, but from a weaker language.

We are then introduced to a constant Exodus spirituality, which, however, is oriented towards the freedom of the Promised Land, the Home that is truly ours.

It is here - we perceive within - the outpouring of the intrinsic Centre, the personal Core, the founding Eros that calls.

Presence that detests the cage of patterns, approaching the rare, unusual (nothing grandiose) Irrepeatability that we are.

In all of this, awakening interest, and real, passionate life, which is not 'immune', nor definitive.

I mean, it happens even with God, to make a mistake.

We get back up, because that humus nourishes - and in the varied experience lurks - an opportunity, a knowledge, a skill, a greater authenticity: an added value.

The Father's call remains foreign both to the usual ideas of the verticism of objectives, and to adult mechanisms of purification - not aimed at ordinary existence (typical of philosophical or moralistic asceticism).

So the Baptism in Spirit is a Light - for us an inner increase, a sublimation of self-awareness and one's goal.

No longer a pale goal, only adjusted to roles, procedures, positions that the person does not feel are their own.

The very "rending of the heavens" no longer sealed by a (severe) distance or cultural paradigm, speaks of a now uninterrupted and growing Communication of the divine with human nature.

Exploring we can err, in both senses.

But far worse is to feel dull and unmotivated, and to act according to fixed nomenclatures and concatenations, i.e. by calculation.

In fact, in ancient religious culture, perfection and unworthiness are incomprehensible.

Conversely, in Christ we return to the moment of Creation, where "the olive tree" tells of a harmony rebuilt precisely on the limits of sin.

Gen 8:21: "I will curse no more, for the instinct of the human heart is inclined to evil from adolescence".

Here is the Dove, the new symbol of the Spirit.

A clear figure and virtue of concert, of recovery, which animates the believer - who is no longer called to titanic efforts, nor obliged to reproduce futile clamour that he does not want and does not belong to him.

Ancient kingdoms expressed and aroused the aggressive energy of beasts. 

The authentic woman and man, on the other hand, are the revolutionaries of caress, of kindness granted even to their own and others' limits.

Faithful, not of the sphere but of the polyhedron: no longer the hard and safe ones, planted on trivial self-celebratory euphorias.

In the school of the great Precursor, Jesus had noticed the proliferation of coruscating and 'spiritual' frictions that arose between (the Baptist's) pupils - who competed to set up the Kingdom.

Having assessed the vacuous coldness and the danger of homologation - the new Rabbi definitely understands that the worst disease of people is not having humanising impulses.

Impulses that are perhaps ill-tempered, certainly, but that predispose not to Exodus, but to a sort of climb in predictable stages, with perpetual pause; at room-temperature.

Here, no shady side becomes new wealth for all.

For this reason, on "the Mount" we proclaim no commanded "No" that denies our ardours - but rather, Beatitudes.

They open breath and all existence. Even of the uncertain.

In short, not yet knowing who we are and where we are going means the possibility of reinventing ourselves.

Thus we learn to love our limitations and the many limiting conditions: they remind us of the Jordan.

The earth needs Light, but the Light needs the earth. They are an expression of the New Covenant.

To internalise and live the message:

Have you ever met a wise spiritual companion who, instead of rushing you into his or her solution, teaches you to love your limits, knowing that sooner or later they will surprise and astound both you and him or her?