The Humility, and Glory, of Water: Thoughts on the Baptism of Christ

By Christopher Zehnder

“I need to be baptized by you and do you come to me?” (Matthew 3.14)

Thus, John the Baptist, when Our Lord sought baptism from him. It is no wonder that John should shrink from this act; it so ill accorded with this man, whom John had proclaimed the one “whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.” For John’s ministry had been toward sinners — a mere symbolic washing with water, an earnest of mercy and forgiveness. This One, however, would baptize “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

“I need to be baptized by you…”

The Imperfection of Christ: the Role of the Church in the Fulfillment of Man and God-Man

By Christopher Zehnder

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth… And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1:14, 16)

“…and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:22-23)

These verses confront us with mystery; or is it perhaps a contradiction? An absurdity? Paul says the Church is the fullness of him from whom John says we all receive grace. The Church is the fulfillment of him who is the fulfillment of all. How can this be?

We readily accept the idea of Christ as our fulfillment; Christ is the fullness from which we receive our fullness— our union through love and faith (and, one day, knowledge) with God. Yet, as Church teaching and Sacred Scripture attest, we we partake of the divine life through Christ, not as individuals but by incorporation, by baptism, into the Body of Christ, the Church (I Cor. 12:13). Jesus Christ, thus, is our fulfillment in and through the Church.

Nevertheless, how the Church serves as the instrument of human fulfillment in Christ is not, perhaps, readilly apparent. After all, is it not the individual intellect that perceives God through faith? Is it not the individual will that loves him? The Church may appear, then, as a temporary expedient, a mere instrument of the soul’s union with God, not a constituent aspect of it. Christ is our fulfillment; but how does the Church figure in this fulfillment?

And how is the Church, as Paul says, “the fullness of him who fills all in all”? The Church lives the divine life because she is joined to God through the instrumentality of Christ’s human nature. The Church receives her all from Christ; how, then, can Christ receive aught at all from the Church?