That event too was an Epiphany, a showing forth. When Jesus came out of the water, according to St Mark”s Gospel “the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: and there came a voice from heaven, saying, ”Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”.”
St Mark chose to start his Gospel with this event, for similar reasons that St Matthew chose to begin with a genealogy and the visit of magi: it was a public revelation of God, a Theophany, as the Greeks later called it.
In their icons they show Jesus in the Jordan with a ray coming down from God the Father in heaven, bringing the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. It is an icon of the Trinity, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
I was wondering: Why a dove? Quite a sweet answer is attributed to the ninth-century monastic writer Hrabanus Maurus, who, something of a magpie of knowledge himself, might have been expected to know a bit about birds. Anyway he enumerates dovelike qualities to fit each of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The dove, he says:
1. Dwells beside the running stream, so that, on perceiving the hawk, it may plunge in and escape. This signifies wisdom. The saints dwell beside the running waters of Holy Scripture, to escape the devil.
2. Prefers the more choice seeds. Knowledge. The saints prefer sound doctrines for nourishment.
3. Feeds the brood of other birds. Counsel. The saints, by teaching and example, feed men who were once the brood of the devil.
4. Does not tear with its beak. Understanding. The saints do not rend sound doctrines, as heretics do.
5. Has no gall [a belief to which Hamlet refers]. Piety. By this the saints are free from unreasonable anger.
6. Builds its nest in the cleft of a rock. Fortitude. The saints build their nest (take refuge and hope) in the wounds of Christ, the Rock of strength [as Augustus Toplady noted in his famous hymn, “Rock of Ages”].
7. Has a plaintive song. Fear of the Lord. The saints delight in repenting of sin.
Hrabanus”s comments belong to the curious history of poetic homiletics. But it is quite true that the words quoted by St Mark recall the prophecy of Isaiah: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”
But why a dove? The bird at the Jordan might have been a wild bird – an eagle, say. Wild birds belong to God just as much. A dove was a bird acceptable to God (as a sacrifice), and indeed when Jesus was presented in the Temple, he was given to God as the firstborn, and bought back or redeemed with a pair of doves.
But, as Jesus is seen figuratively as the Lamb of God, a lamb being a creature belonging with the people of God and thus an acceptable offering from them (like that of Abel), so the dove of the Holy Spirit is associated with the people of God. Jesus is baptised for their sake, and the Holy Spirit comes down for their sake.
In earlier centuries, various false doctrines had made Christian writers shy of discussing the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus. There are wiser words in the first section of an interesting little book called The Holy Spirit in the Life of Jesus (1994), by Raniero Cantalamessa (a regular preacher to the household of Pope John Paul II).
“The descent of the Holy Spirit was for our benefit,” he quotes the fourth-century hero of Christianity, St Athanasius, as saying, “to make us holy, so that we might share in his anointing.” The name Christ does, after all, mean “anointed”.
Why, then, asks Cantalamessa, is there such a gap in time between Jesus”s anointing and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for us at Pentecost? One answer comes from St Irenaeus: “The Holy Spirit descended upon the Son of God (made the Son of man) becoming accustomed in him to dwell and rest among the human race.” Accustomed is a nice idea.
So Jesus, whose name is also Emmanuel (“God with us”), lives among us as the Son of God the Father, but in him among us too lives the Spirit of God. Those three are the one God, the Holy Trinity, who is shown forth at the Epiphany.
__________________
The Daily Telegraph