Water and Spirit (Part 3 of 4)
Baptism and the Meaning of Matter
An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign: and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. (Mt 12:39)
An adequate response to the reality of disorder can only be found within the mystery (μυστήριον) – the word used by the Apostle Paul to describe God’s eternal plan for creation (e.g., Ephesians 1:9). The very word “mystery” carries the implication that this plan is “hidden,” and cannot be communicated verbally. Not because of some arbitrary taboo, but because its content transcends all human experience and all conceptual categories. For Paul, the “mystery” is revealed not in a text or philosophical doctrine, but in an event: the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In the human body of Jesus, the material creation – which was subject to the “futility” of its intrinsic tendency towards annihilation (Romans 8:20) – receives its definitive elevation into the freedom of the divine life.
This event is accomplished in a way that is fully consistent with the rest of the Biblical narrative: not ignoring or minimizing the necessary disorder of the water — which must remain as a prerequisite for life itself — but confronting it directly. Jesus himself interpreted his own mission through the Biblical story of the prophet Jonah. Jonah is on a ship in the middle of the Mediterranean, on his way to Spain. A violent storm on the high seas unleashes the full destructive force of the waters, driving the hardened sailors to desperate fear. Jonah saves the ship by making the crew throw him overboard, into the very midst of the water. Somehow this submersion in the water eliminates the danger, calming the waves and enabling the sailors to reach port safely.
The story of Jonah raises profound questions that shed an important light on the mystery. Above all, it shows the radical insufficiency of human beings to come to terms with the “water” on their own. When Jonah has himself thrown into the water, he is merely accepting the natural consequences of the primordial sin. Jonah ran away from God and tried to build his own autonomous life in a far country; now he faces the necessary conclusion of that autonomous life, bound within the material cosmos. To drive the point home, God sends a fish to consume the prophet, which normally would accelerate the annihilating power of the sea with its digestive organs. Jonah’s restoration after three days is a demonstration of God’s radical omnipotence, but without any lasting effect outside of its immediate historical context (to such an extent that it remains unclear whether it is intended as a historical account at all).
For the sign of Jonah to receive its full meaning, the “new Jonah” would have to be someone exempt from the primordial sin. Someone who lives entirely from the “breath of God” (cf. Gn 2:7) with a life that persists unbreakably against the full force of material disorder. Someone who enters into the destructive waters not by necessity, but as a voluntary act of love and submission to God, harnessing the disorder itself as a way of throwing the force of love into higher relief. In other words, the sign of Jonah can only be brought to fulfillment by a “son of God.”
Jesus’ intimate filial relationship with God was something clearly visible in his words, actions and prayers. His consciousness of being God’s own Son and the way in which this consciousness determined his whole pattern of behavior are displayed everywhere in the contemporary accounts of his life. And it is precisely as Son that he deliberately embraces his public execution, describing it as a “baptism” — a ritual immersion in water (Mark 10:38, Luke 12:50, CCC 1225). He thus brings the sign of Jonah to completion, passing through the water of death to the definitive life of the Resurrection.