THE BAPTISM
And yet Jesus came in the midst of a crowd of sinners to immerse Himself in the Jordan. The problem is not mysterious for him who sees something beyond the most familiar meaning in the rite reinstituted by John. The case of Jesus is unique. The baptism of Jesus is like others superficially, but is justified in other ways. Baptism is not only a washing of the flesh as a symbol of the will to cleanse the soul, a remnant of the primitive analogy of water which washed away material stains and can wash away spiritual stains. This physical metaphor is useful to the symbolism of the crowd, is a necessary ceremony for the carnal eye of the many who need a material help to believe in the immaterial. But it was not made for Jesus.
He went to John that the prophecy of the precursor might be fulfilled. His kneeling down before the prophet of fire was a recognition of John’s quality of true announcer, of his worth as a loyal ambassador who has done his duty who can say now that his work is finished. Jesus submitting Himself to this symbolical investiture really invests John with the legitimate title of precursor.
Jesus, about to begin a new epoch of His life, His true life, bore witness by His immersion in water to His willingness to die, but at the same time to His certainty that He would rise again. He did not go down to the Jordan to cleanse Himself, but to show that His second life was beginning and that He will not die, but only seem to die, just as He only seemed to be purified by the waters of the Jordan.
THE DESERT
As soon as Jesus emerged from the water He went into the desert. From the multitude to solitude! Until then He had lived among the waters and the fields of Galilee and in the green meadows along the Jordan. Now He went up on the rocky mountains whence no springs arise, where no seed sprouts, where the only living creatures are snakes. Until then He had lived among the working men of Nazareth, among John’s penitents; now He goes up on the solitary mountains where no human face is seen, where no human voice is heard. The New Man puts the desert between himself and humanity.
The person who says, “woe to the solitary!” only gives the measure of his own cowardice. Society is a sacrifice, meritorious in proportion to its hardness. For those rich in soul, solitude is a prize and not an expiation, a period of sure value, a time when inner beauty is created, a reconciliation with the absent. Only in solitude do we live with our peers, with those solitary souls who think the great-hearted thoughts which console us in the absence of other consolations.
The people who cannot endure solitude are the mediocre and the mean. They have nothing to offer, they are afraid of themselves, of their own emptiness. They are condemned to the eternal solitude of their own minds, a desolate inner desert where the poisonous plants of waste lands are the only things to grow. They are restless, unquiet, dejected when they cannot forget themselves in others, deafen themselves with the words of others. They delude themselves with the factitious life of others who are in their turn deluded by it. They cannot live without mingling, a passive atom, in the streams which overflow every morning from the sewers of the cities.
Jesus lived among men and He was to return among men because He loved them. But in the years to come He often hid Himself, to be alone, far even from His disciples. To love men, you need from time to time to depart from them: far from them, we draw near to them. The small soul remembers only the evil they have done him. His night is restless with bitterness and his mouth poisoned with anger. The great soul remembers benefits alone, and thankful for a few good deeds, forgets the great evils he has endured. Even those which were not pardoned at the moment are blotted out from his heart, and having renewed his original love for his brothers, he goes back to men.
For Jesus these forty days of solitude are the last of His preparation. For forty years the Jewish people (prophetic symbol of Christ) wandered in the desert before entering into the kingdom promised by God. For forty days Moses remained close to God to hear His laws; for forty days Elijah wandered in the desert fleeing the vengeance of the wicked queen.