Long ago, the unborn infant John recognizes Jesus, unseen, womb to womb. The baby John leaps for joy as the two mothers, recognizing one another, fill with the Holy Spirit. (Luke 1:41-4) Amniotic water prefigures Jordan River water and re-birth. Now the two grown men face one another, their grim destinies before them. Again the Spirit descends upon them and The Voice of the Holy is heard above the waters (Psalm 29:3).

Great those long ago mothers recognizing the sacred in the mundane. Great was his grace that poured the mystic waters (Meditation One). Great the soul stepping into the stream. Great the soul losing self in the current (Meditation Two). Great the man or woman coming forth from the stream to act in the world in humility of spirit (Meditation Three).

Many liturgical churches will have a ceremony of the renewal of Baptismal vows this Sunday. May awe unbalance us in the mystic stream. - Suzanne

Meditation One (Introit)
In Praise of John

Hair of the camel furnished a coarse raiment
To your blessed members; leather your girdle;

You drink the cold spring, food for you wild honey
Mingled with locusts.

All other prophets, in their hearts divining,
Sang of the light coming to the people;

Your finger touched the Lamb of God who takes
Sin from the world.

None has arisen in the mighty spaces
Of round earth’s borders holier than John was:

Great was his grace who poured the mystic waters
O’er the Redeemer.

-Paul, deacon of Apulia, c720-799
An Advent Sourcebook, Liturgy Training Publications

Jesus immersed in water; naked, humble, vulnerable in his humanity, but also the new Adam. The water as tomb and womb pre-figures the crucifixion and resurrection. Sometimes the chasm-look of the water is interpreted as the descent into hell. John the Baptist, at one with the landscape of the desert, completely dependent upon God, humbles himself to baptize the Messiah. Angels, reminiscent of the Trinity (often there are three rather than the four in this template). Their postures also suggest receiving Christ, as in the Eucharist, hands veiled in respect.

(exerpt referencing the teachings of the early Church theologians)

(Water) possessed of itself a cleansing property and for this further reason was regarded as holy: hence its use in ritual ablution, where its properties washed away all offences and all stain of guilt. The waters of baptism alone wash away sin, and baptism is only conferred once because it opens the way to a new state, that of the new person. … The cleansing properties possessed by water gave it the additional force of the power of redemption. Immersion was regenerative, it effected a rebirth in the sense of its being simultaneously alive and dead. Water wipes out what has gone before, since it restores the individual to a fresh condition. Immersion is like Christ’s entombment. He came to life again after descending into the bowels of the Earth. Water is the symbol of regeneration and the waters of baptism lead explicitly to being 'born again' (John 3:3-7). They are the means of initiation. The Shepherd of Hermes speaks of those 'who go down into the waters dead and come up again alive.'

- The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, Chevalier & Gheerbrant p.1084

Meditation Two  (Insight)
I Felt The Current Take Me

What was in that candle’s light
that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back, my Friend! The form of our love
is not a created form.

Nothing can help me but the Beauty.
There was a dawn I remember

when my soul heard something
from Your soul. I drank water

from Your Spring and felt
the current take me.

-Rumi 1207-1273
'Like This', 43 Odes
trans. Coleman Barks

Meditation Three (Integration)
Humility and Potential

On both sides there is great humility … "Suffer it to be so now," says the Lord, "For thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness." John acquiesced and obeyed; he baptized the Lamb of God, and washed the waters. It was we who were cleansed, not He; for we know that the waters were cleansed in order that we might be washed by them.

- Bernard of Clairveaux 1090-1153
In Epiphania Domini I.6-7

If there is anything I have learned about men and women, it is that there is a deeper spirit of altruism than is ever evident. Just as the rivers we see are minor compared to the underground streams, so, too, the idealism that is visible is minor compared to what people carry in their hearts unreleased or scarcely released.

-Albert Schweitzer 1875-1965