When the Baptist preached the coming of Christ, he spoke of a baptism of fire, "I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3:11-12).
I thought of this fire when I heard an interview today about an Altadena family that lost everything in the fires. Everything was destroyed except for two statues: the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. So they returned to the home and dared to give thanks to God by singing the Regina Caeli, a hymn to Mary the Queen of Heaven. All they owned was consumed like chaff by the fire, but they were consumed by the Holy Spirit. Whereas a lot of sorrow, anxiety, anger, blaming and deflecting marks most of the interviews of the victims of this catastrophe, here, for a few moments, was a voice of thanksgiving and hope right in the midst of ashes. They were baptized in a different fire than the earthly fire that swept through their community, and their voices proclaimed a different kind of judgment than anything the secular media could ever fathom. Yet people of faith understood them - for their hope was not the feel good stuff of wishful thinking, but the sober strength that comes from God.
What is this fire? My thoughts go to the idea of co-inherence in the writings of Charles Williams. He saw a heavenly and a hellish London co-inhere in the earthly London of his time. His novels explore the access to heavenly realities hidden in the mundane as an answer to the hellish powers that seem at work in the world. Similarly, the fire with which Christ baptizes and the fires that consume California co-inhere in each other, and the challenge of those who would begin to pray is to contemplate how heaven is at work in the catastrophe until eucharist, that is thanksgiving, can be offered. For those who see the fire without Christ, the catastrophe can become just that - a creeping in of nihilistic destruction in a dangerous world. But with Christ, no matter how bitter the tragedy, His saving presence changes every sorrow into a new blessing. When He entered the waters of the Jordan, He entered into the destructive forces of the world to bring this new blessing. When He baptizes with fire, it is never senseless destruction but always a new beginning - a cause, no matter how hidden, for thanksgiving.
My heart goes to my friends in southern California who face the loss of everything. Californians have heard this story repeatedly - the Thomas Fire in Ventura, the Camp Fire in Paradise, and countless others, each more devestating than the last. One does not realize how traumatizing this actually is until he or his loved ones are burned by it. More and more of us have come to share the sorrow of loss and the hope of rebuilding.
This is where the Christian faith has something so important to offer society today. Every destructive fire should remind us of Christ's baptism and fill us with awe and reverence. Every catastrophe should remind us how we need God and to humble our hearts before Him. If it is a chastisement, be assured that He only chastises the son whom he loves. This means He loves us - and this is the deepest most fundamental truth of all. This means that if we turn our hearts by faith to the love of God, hidden in overwhelming tragedy is a mystery of salvific importance. In circumstances of total loss, one is given the opportunity to learn how to truly pray and love.
Let our hearts contemplate the fire of God. Unquenchable visible flames that burn through California speak to us of an invisible fire that rages before the coming of Christ. This quenchable fire deserves our attention as the Christmas Season ends and we begin our preparation for Lent. Remembering this spiriutal fire helps us situate ourselves in the reverence and humility that the Baptism of the Lord ought to evoke.
For the baptismal ministry of John over Jesus did not change Jesus who was already sinless, but it did sew into the waters a new power that would change everything. When Jesus went down into the water, he signified that the Eternal Son of the Father entered into this fragmented and broken world, and when he emerged from the Jordan, He revealed the beginning of a new world characterized by the outpouring of the Spirit command of the Father's voice.
To clarify, when we say the baptism of Jesus signifies this mystery of a new creation, we mean that the ministery of John actually brought this new creation into effect. When God humbly asked for and accepted the prophetic act of John, something truly changed in the world. This was the manifestation of a whole new coming of Christ that will culminate in the final judgment at the end of time.
The new baptism Christ will offer for the new world that He is creating will not only wash away sin but it will give the Holy Spirit so that hearts can hear the voice of the Father. This new world is more real than anything else that passes away in this short life we now share. And Christ's coming again in glory will mark the completion of the great work that began under the ministry of the Baptist. The words of a Serbian hymn come to mind. The song is about the end of time - Pobedna Pesma and its words resound with reverence and hope. It is a song of victory, of the return of Christ, but also a hymn of judgment. Those who know this song will forgive my paraphrased translation, but the song
Behold, the coming of the Lord with His heavenly hosts arrayed for war. Let our foes be ashamed! Let them be ashamed and repent! Look how radiant, how resplendent, how resounding this terrible army! The highest mountains and the mightiest of the world fall down under its onslaught!
Look the Lord is coming to enthrone Himself! Seraphims charge forth! Cherubims surge swiftly behind them! All of earth is burning, everything is in smoke! All is smoke! We are breathless! The joy and horror cannot be described! No one to describe, this miracle of miracles when the heavens sieze the sinful earth! When heaven binds close the earth, the whole of earth's fruit becomes spoils! Then world is at its end! Myriads upon myriads of heavenly hosts arrayed for war take to the field of battle! Angels blast their trumpets! The righteous cry out their battle cry!
The righteous cry out, "Behold, the coming of the Lord! Let all land and sea go up in smoke! And , indeed, both the dry land and the waters are vanishing away! Look, all that the scriptures foretold is being fulfilled even now! A new heavens and earth are being born! Here comes the Lord! Rise up from the dead! Here He comes to judge the world! To save the world and save the flock! The whole cosmos shakes loudly! The Earth rumbles and Heaven roars! Our gold and silver are useless now! Gold and silver are passing away! And may you now shine on us, Son of God!"
The sonship of Jesus Christ shines on us in Christian prayer. He comes in glory everytime we cross ourselves and dare to cry out with faith. He comes when we honor His mother and the saints. He comes as if for the first time. He comes as if for the last time - and every coming is a preparation for his final coming. So, in the midst of tragic loss, to be Christian is to cry out, "The Lord is coming!" and whenever we muster enough faith and hope to do so, we have joined ourselves with the Cherubim and Seraphim, and the whole array of heavenly hosts who fight for us against sin, sorrow and death, who are coming in the fire of the Holy Spirit to bring about the New Heavens and the New Earth - established not anything passing but in the eternal sonship, love and truth of Christ.
Against this mystery, we begin to understand the powerful movement of the Holy Spirit in the family that declared Mary the Queen of Heaven even as they stood the the wreckage of everything that was once theirs in life. His baptism was a physical immersion in the waters of the Jordan, but spiritually the Holy Spirit came down on Him in the form of a dove. These fires are a physical baptism of whole communities, but spiritually the Holy Spiriit is breathing new life. The Holy Spirit flutters over all those who would join themselves to Christ by faith, and this Spirit recreates them into the Body of Christ. This Body has conquered death and beholds the face of the Father. It also beholds the truth about the world and the false judgments that trap people into a worldly way of thinking. To be part of this Body means to enter into the chaos of the world, to allow it all to wash over us including the tragic catastrophes of life, but then to rise up in confident hope that a new heavens and a new earth are already being born, and Christ is coming to wipe away every tear and to reveal the wonder of the love of the Father. Those who welcome this coming with the Mother of Christ, they know how right and just it is to give thanks and to sing to heaven.
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