Baptism

We are baptized into Christ's life and death.  Therefore, suffering (and the grace to endure it) is incorporated into it.  We MUST be baptized in order to face suffering as Christ did.

God uses creation (dust of the earth) to create us, and breathes His Spirit into us. The human being is not created “ex nihilo” like all the rest of creation, but out of what is existing. We bear both creation AND God’s image. The human being is called the “microcosm” of creation by the Fathers. Man was to be the “bridge” between the creation and the spiritual world because it was only man that had elements of both. Rom. 8 speaks of the connection between the human being and creation’s salvation and redemption from corruption. Man failed in that “job” so Christ, in His flesh united divinity and the creation again opening the door for the human being and ALL THE COSMOS to be brought together, or as St. Paul says “summed up in Christ” (Eph. 1:3,10, Col. 15-20. The Garden was a created place. It had two trees, one brought knowledge of good and evil and the other was the Tree of Life. When Adam and Eve sinned an angel was put to guard the Tree of Life lest they eat and live forever. A MATERIAL TREE BROUGHT PHYSICAL ETERNAL LIFE.
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Today we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus: the Child, the son of the Virgin, whom we contemplated in the mystery of his birth, we see today an adult emerging himself in the waters of the Jordan River, thus sanctifying the waters and the entire cosmos - as evidenced by the Eastern tradition.
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