Illume: Mysteries of Light

By Philip Krill

In 2002, St. Pope John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries to the rosary, writing that ‘the whole mystery of Christ is a mystery of light. He is the “light of the world’” (Jn. 8:12). ILLUME is a contemplative reflection upon the Luminous Mysteries in the life of Jesus, written in a lectio divina key, inviting us to enter into the Uncreated Light of the Most Holy Trinity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Feb 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781483497297

Philip Krill

PHILIP KRILL is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO

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KRILL

Copyright © 2019 Philip Krill.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Scripture quotations are from The Revised Standard Version of the Bible: Catholic Edition, Copyright © 1965, 1966 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9730-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-9729-7 (e)

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To

Dorothy Barry

Luminous with Love Divine

INTRODUCTION

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all (1 Jn. 1:5). God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them (1 Jn. 4:16).

Light and Love - these are the defining qualities of the Trinitarian Mystery whose benevolent luminosity infinitely exceeds our capacity to comprehend (cf. 1 Cor. 2:9).

This Mystery of Divine Light and Love has been revealed to us by Him who is the Light of the world (Jn. 8:12; 9:5). The Father is the unoriginate Source of Uncreated Light, and Jesus is the Luminous Mystery eternally generated by Him: God from God, Light from Light. He is the Eternal Word, and, in His Incarnation, He is the effulgent extension of the Father’s Uncreated Light into our world (cf. Jn. 1:5). God’s Holy Spirit illumines us with Divine Light and Love, dispelling our darkness and deifying us with a participatory share in His own Trinitarian Life (cf. 2 Pt. 1:4).

Every word of Scripture, as well as every devotional and sacramental Christian practice, is backlit with this Trinitarian Light. Where the gospel fails to inspire, it does so because its luminosity has disappeared. Instead of being proclaimed as an Epiphany of divinizing Light and Love, the gospel of the Lord is often presented as a message of ethical improvement or as a talisman for instant salvation. But kerygma is not didache, nor is the gospel a manual of spiritual etiquette. The whole of Scripture - indeed, the whole of the Christian life - is a Mystery of transfiguring Light and Love. Approaching the Word of God as anything less represents a tragic exchange of our birthright in Christ for a bowl of religious pottage (cf. Gen. 26:31-34).

Written in a lectio divina style, and inspired by the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr, ILLUME, Mysteries of Light offers as a contemplative contribution to the neo-patristic synthesis called for by the Vatican II Council. The hopes of Vatican II have failed to materialize largely because the Trinitarian vision of the Ressourcement movement that gave birth to the Council has never been fully understood, appreciated, or integrated into the spiritual and liturgical life of the church. ILLUME, Mysteries of Light is written to help deepen our Trinitarian awareness and to rediscover our life in Christ as a deifying mystery of Light and Love.

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 2019

Baptism In The Jordan

John 1:23

[John the Baptist] said, ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.

I am the voice…

John is God’s instrument, His messenger. The Idea, the Word, the Breath which inspires John comes from beyond himself. John is but the medium of a Truth, a Way, a Life that precedes and exceeds him (cf. Jn. 14:6). His is a prophetic voice: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me (Isa. 59:21; 61:1). This declaration, applied originally to Isaiah, can equally be said of John. John is a pneumatokos, Spirit-bearer. He appears after the manner of Elijah, the prophet of Carmel (cf. Mt. 11:14; 1 Kg. 18:42ff.). He has heard the Word of the Lord in the desert (cf. Lk. 1:80; 3:2). His lifetime of ascesis has prepared him to be especially receptive to the voice of God. He is chosen to be YHWH’s spokesperson. He utters a second Proto-evangelium (cf. Gen. 3:15).¹ He announces the coming of the Messiah. He gives witness to the One who comes after me but who existed before me (Jn. 1:15). John the Baptizer cannot but cry out that something great, something monumental, something earth-shaking is about to happen. He is filled with the violent urgency of the prophets. Whether Isaiah or Elijah, John is, like them, compelled by the Spirit of God to speak out in His holy Name.

Still, John is but the "voice." The substance of what he bespeaks is not his own. The Mystery he is compelled to reveal comes from beyond. John feels the heat of God’s inspiration in his bones (cf. Isa. 38:13; Jer. 20:9; Hab. 3:16), but the full Truth of what he has come to announces has not yet come fully to light. John’s prophetic utterance, as impassioned as it is, remains shrouded in darkness. It is occluded by the very glory of the One whom John will eventually behold and baptize. Just as Moses and even Jesus’ apostles remained ‘in the dark’ when the Face of God was unveiled before them (Ex. 20:21; 33:20), so also does John the Baptizer remain blind to the truth of the One he is inspired to announce. He says the right things but "knows not whereof he speaks (cf. Mt. 20:22). John goes to his death still wondering, perhaps, if Jesus is the One to come or should we be looking for another?" (Lk. 7:19). The full truth of who Jesus is, and what He has come to accomplish, is revealed only in His Resurrection. Here the crucified Christ appears to the perpetrators of His murder as their Forgiving Victim. But all of this is unknown to John as he begins his witness to the coming Messiah.

…of one crying in the wilderness…

Everything is wilderness apart from knowing Christ. John is wandering aimlessly in the wilderness until he beholds the Lamb of God (Jn. 1:29). Yet even in his meanderings in the desert, John is guided by an interior sense, and interior vision, an internal guiding system bringing him ever closer to the One he will proclaim as ‘greater than himself.’ He is led by an interior light, a flame of faith burning in the center of his heart. Oh happy night, writes St. John of the Cross, when I went forth unobserved…with no other light or guide save that which burned in my heart.² This is the same living flame of love, the light of faith, that infallibly guided John the Baptizer as he wandered, seemingly without direction, towards the Holy One of God.

Like John, all of humanity, all of human history is wending its way towards Christ. Consider the following series of numbers: 2, 4… Apart from an interpretive key, we have no way of knowing what the series should be. It could be any of the following: 2, 4, 6, 8… or 2, 4, 8, 16… or 2, 4, 16, 272. Without an interpretive key, without a ‘key hypothesis,’ the meaning of the sequence remains unknown and unknowable. The coming of Christ functions like, say, the number 6 in such a sequence. It is the key term - the key condition - that unlocks the meaning of everything. Nothing before or after it has any meaning, any coherence, without knowing what it is. This magical figure redeems or transforms a situation of darkness into a situation in which the light or logos of meaning has appeared.³

This analogy works brilliantly to illustrate the absolute singularity of Jesus. St. Irenaeus’ way of describing this same ineffable uniqueness of Christ is to call Him ‘the Key Hypothesis.’ Jesus is the meaning and measure of all things both divine and human. He is also the divine gyroscope guiding the trajectory and fulfillment of human history.⁴ Jesus is the missing piece that enables the entire tableau of creation to hang together. He is the capstone (Eph. 2:20), the cornerstone (Mt. 12:10), the keystone (cf. Rev. 3:20), the Omega-point⁵ in connection with which all things cohere and coalesce. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation…He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col. 1:15, 17).

There is no way for John the Baptist to conceive of Jesus in this manner. Nor can the world, locked as it is in its myopic, mimetic, self-contained system of figurations, perceive of Christ as the Key that unlocks all the mysteries of the universe. Jesus escapes the interpretive horizons of both all religious and secular seers. Still, He is the "Light shining in the darkness which the darkness cannot overcome" (Jn. 1:5). As St. Paul experienced on the road to Damascus, the Light of Christ, appearing suddenly in the darkness, at once relativizes and redeems all previous interpretive frameworks. He is the Solution revealing the severity of otherwise unperceived dilemmas. He is the Divine Healer, disclosing in His very goodness, the tragic depths of all the woundedness and evil in the world.

Make straight the way of the Lord…

John is all about straightening things out. He is the Essene ascetic⁶ who feasts only on locusts and wild honey (Mt. 3:4). He is clothed in camel’s hair (Mk. 1:6). He exists on the bare minimum. He is gaunt, strict, severe, and full of fire. He is the lean and mean instrument of the Lord. None born of woman is greater than he (Mt. 11:11). He embodies the prophetic tradition of Israel. He is the last and greatest of the prophets. He is zealous with zeal for the things of the Lord (1 Kg. 19:10, 14). He comes more in the spirit of Elijah than of Isaiah (Mt. 11:14; 16:14; 17:11-12). He yearns and pines for the Day of the Lord (cf. Mt. 3:7). He anticipates with an uncontainable fervor the coming of the Lord’s Anointed One - the New David, the Messiah - who will set the record straight and set straight all the evildoers in the world.

Was John the Baptist there on that fateful day in the synagogue at Nazareth when Jesus, freshly back from His conquest of the devil in the desert (Mk. 1:12-13), read from the scroll of Isaiah (Lk. 4:16-21)? If so, John would have wondered greatly at Jesus’ manipulation of the text. He would have been bewildered, if not upset, by the fact that Jesus intentionally abbreviated the prophecy of Isaiah, omitting the key punchline regarding a year of vengeance of the Lord (Lk. 4:18-19; cf. Isa. 61:2).⁷ So intent is John the Baptist to make straight the way of the Lord, he cannot conceive of the Lord forgoing vengeance as His primary means of straightening things out. Increasingly, Jesus’ teaching presented an obstacle (σκάνδαλον, skandalon, cause for offense) for John. For Jesus’ way of straightening things out was singularly without violence, without vengeance (Mt. 5:38-48; Lk. 23:34; cf. Rom. 12:21). This was a major stumbling block (σκάνδαλον, skandalon) for John. It caused him, as he was languishing in Herod’s prison, to send his disciples to Jesus with this question: "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" (Luke 7:19).

Mark 1:7

And John preached, saying, ‘After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.’

And John preached…

Preaching is not teaching. Evangelization is not catechesis. Kerygma is not didache. Proclaiming is not explaining. John the Baptist does not seek to inform; he seeks to inspire. He desires to move his hearers. He aspires to inspire because he is on fire.

John is consumed by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit both precedes and succeeds the Incarnation of the Eternal Word.⁸ The Spirit prepares the world for Christ, makes Him present when He comes, and facilitates our deifying communion with Him through the mystery of faith.⁹ Enveloped by the Spirit of God, John the Baptist seems a mini-Burning Bush (cf. Ex. 3:1-6). Like the theophany that transformed Moses into God’s prophet, John is on fire with the Spirit, but not destroyed in the process. He is fully aflame with the inspiration of the Divine.

As an extreme ascetic (cf. Mt. 3:4), the Baptizer’s internal and external purifications have rendered him perfect tinder for the Fire of God’s Word. As YHWH’s prophet, John cannot not preach. He cannot not inveigh. He is overcome with an unrestricted sense of urgency. He is impelled, compelled by a Power far greater than himself. Woe to me, said St. Paul, if I do not preach the Good News! (1 Cor. 9:16). John the Baptist experiences his vocation exactly the same way. All of his integrity, the entirety of his mission, depends on his being faithful and responsive to the impulse of the Holy Spirit that stirs mightily within him.

‘After me comes he who is mightier than I…’

The future reveals the meaning of the present. The present is no precedent for the future. Narratively speaking, all meaning is disclosed to us retroactively. We realize what is happening in the present only with hindsight. The future is an unlimited, open-ended horizon. It is an icon, as it were, of the Ever-Greater nature of God Himself.

John looks to the future for the coming of the Alpha and Omega of history (Rev. 1:8; 21:6; 22:13). He is acutely aware that One is coming whose Presence will reveal the meaning of all that is and was and is to come. Yet, nothing could have prepared John - nor could have anything prepared the world - for the Revelation (Apocalypsis, unveiling) that takes place in Jesus. Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End of history. In Him, "the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Col. 1:19). Nothing that has come or gone before Jesus can adequately account for the Mystery of His Incarnation, or for His redemptive impact on history and on the world. The light shines (φαίνω, appears) in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome (καταλαμβάνω, grasp, lay hold of, comprehend) it" (John 1:5). Jesus is literally incomprehensible, both to John and to us. He is an unutterable Mystery (μυστήριον, mystērion) for which no amount of historical precedent could possibly prepare us. Even the prophets knew not whereof they spoke when they predicted "the One to come (e.g., Dan. 7:13-14). For who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" (Isa. 53:1).

John himself, for all his deference to "he who is mightier than I," is scandalized by Jesus. John was expecting the Lion of Judah (Hos. 5:14). Instead he beheld the Lamb of God (Jn. 1:29, 36). This caused great consternation for John. For when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ (Mt. 11:2–3).

Jesus was "New Wine (Mk. 2:22). The ancient wineskins of Israelite religion could not contain the Divine Effulgence of the Incarnate Word. Jesus explodes all categories of Torah and Temple, causing immense confusion in John and activating murderous envy in the heart of the religious establishment. Everyone, including His mother, is baffled by Jesus (Mk. 3:21; cf. Lk. 2:48). John the Baptizer is no exception. He know Jesus is mightier than I," but he has no real conception of the nature of the Messiah’s might.

This is because John is a victim of religion, of the Sacred.¹⁰ Religion, in its social function, legitimates the status quo. It underwrites the sanctioned violence which institutions employ to maintain their coherence. Until the advent of Christ, this violence remained unknown and unknowable. Yet, sacrificial violence is the way of the world. Violence is the human ‘sacred.’ It is the mistaken means the world believes will bring redemption. All institutions, including institutionalized religion, operate according to the Myth of Redemptive Violence.¹¹ This is the misguided, but unquestioned, belief that only violence can overcome violence.

Ever since Cain slew Abel and civilization took permanent shape (Gen. 4:8-17), every social system has been founded upon and sustained by systematic murder. That is, every social order is structured and supported by a system of myths, prohibitions, taboos and rituals that define and defend those who belong and those who do not. Expulsion of the outsider and execution of those who offend the established order is part and parcel of of what the civil order does to maintain its coherence. Such violence is inevitably viewed as sacred, i.e., as something willed by the gods for the good of the people.

Even though John the Baptist was a victim of this sacred violence at the hands of Herod, he was also a perpetrator of violence in his own prophecies about Jesus. For had not John said of Jesus, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (Lk. 3:17)? No wonder then that John was scandalized by Jesus’ merciful and non-violent approach to the civil and religious authorities opposed to Him. John believed the God of Israel to be just as vindictive as the gods of the pagans, perhaps even more so. John envisioned a Messiah who would right the wrongs of the world using the world’s means, i.e., retributive violence. Jesus, however, is "the Lamb who is slain" (Rev. 5:6, 12). Jesus refuses to return evil for evil. He refuses to exchange eye for eye, tooth for tooth (Mt. 5:38-39). John, however, knows no such forbearance. He in possession of no spiritual or social apparatus with which to comprehend such a Mystery. Jesus scandalizes John because "he is mightier than I," but in ways John had no way of imagining.

John’s piety is also misplaced. John says of Jesus, "the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie." John is not aware that Jesus has come down to stoop down. For

"though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil. 2:6–11).

Jesus apotheosis (exultation) is his kenosis (self-dispossession). His glory is his humility, i.e., his acceptance of ignominy at the hands of his oppressors. Hence, Jesus says to John, who is reluctant to baptize Him, "Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness" (Mt. 3:15).

The righteousness of Jesus is His joyful subservience. He is forever subservient to His Father (cf. Jn. 14:28). He comes from the Father and returns to the Father (Jn. 16:28; cf. 1:14; 16:27). He is obedient to the Father because He listens to the Father with the grateful heart of an only-begotten Son (Lk. 10:21; Jn. 11:41). The Father’s slightest wish is Jesus’ most delightful command (Jn. 5:30; cf. Mt. 11:25). There is no heteronomy nor the slightest elements of either superiority or inferiority between the Father and the Son. Consubstantial in their divinity, they relate to each other in a hierarchy of humility. "No one can come to [the Son] unless the Father…draws him (Jn. 6:44), and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal Him" (Mt. 11:27). All that the Father has He gives to the Son, and all that the Son possesses He returns to the Father. Theirs is an asymmetrical relationship in which the Father is the Fountainhead and Jesus the Living Water (cf. Jn. 4:10; 7:38). The Father is the Source of the Son and the Son is the co-eternal Companion of the Father. They are never without each other, even as, from all eternity, the Father continually begets the Son and the Son unfailingly obeys the Father.

Righteousness (δικαιοσύνη, dikaiosunē) in the Bible means right relationship with God.¹² It has little or nothing to do with the sanctimonious, individualistic, and/or forensic meaning that religious folks have attached to it over the years. ‘Righteousness,’ rather, denotes the defining character of those who, knowing their divine election by God for covenantal intimacy with Himself, have fully appropriated their divine favor and have enter into this communion with the seriousness and totality appropriate to the dignity of God and the gift of His election. Righteousness, then, is a term that both designates and describes, identifies and applauds, a person who living in devout accord with all that is understood to be proper, expected, and rightly proportioned to the creature-Creator relationship. Justification is a term that designates a similar state of affairs in which any member of God’s covenantal people is in proper alignment with the One who has initiated this unbreakable relationship. Like the type-written margins on a page, justification means things are lined up properly, that everything is all square. Thus, the terms justification and righteousness might be better translated as fittingness or appropriateness. Abraham was regarded as righteous in God’s eyes because his trustful surrender and spontaneous obedience put him in right relationship with God to receive all God desired to give him (Gen. 15:6). Faith (πίστις, pistis) - trustful surrender - is the appropriate response to God’s promises of Mercy. Abraham was justified by the trust-filled faith he placed in the God who promised him a future of prosperity and abundance (Gen. 22:17).

In truth, however, only Jesus is truly the Righteous One. He alone is the holy one, He alone is the Lord, He alone is the most high.¹³ For before Abraham was, I am, Jesus says (Jn. 8:58). He precedes Abraham in His righteousness before God, i.e., in His right relationship of trustful surrender to His Father.

The kenosis (self-dispossession) of Jesus in the Incarnation flows from His more primordial Ur-kenosis in the Trinity.¹⁴ We begin to discern the meaning of ‘fatherhood,’ Hans Urs von Balthasar notes, in the eternal realm when we consider the Son’s task, which is to reveal this Father’s love (a love that goes to ultimate lengths, for example, the Parable of the Prodigal Son or of the Vineyard): such ‘fatherhood’ can only mean the giving away of everything the Father is, including his entire Godhead (for God, as God, ‘has’ nothing apart from what he ‘is’); it is a giving-away that, in the Father’s act of generation—which lasts for all eternity—leaves the latter’s womb empty: in God, poverty and wealth (that is, wealth of giving) are one and the same…And since the Father has expressed his whole love—which nothing can hold back—in the Son, the Son is the perfect image of the Father, apt to represent the Father’s self-giving in his creation in every respect…he does his Father’s works (Jn 10:37), he gives himself up in love for the many and for each individual (Gal 2:20); he gives himself away in his Eucharist…We can understand this only if we dare to speak…of a first, intratrinitarian kenosis, which is none other than God’s positive ‘self-expropriation’ in the act of handing over the entire divine being in the processions, or…of the unity of ‘poverty’ and ‘wealth’ in absolute being itself…"¹⁵

From all eternity Jesus was in perfect alignment with the One He called My Father. Jesus is forever disposed towards the Father as the grateful recipient of His very Life. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God (πρòς τòν θεόν), and the Word was God" (John 1:1). From all eternity Jesus is pros ton theon - turned towards God. He is facing (πρόσωπον, prosōpon) His Father with all the innocence, love and docility of a little child (cf. Mt. 18:3).¹⁶

From the moment He enters our world, Jesus assumes a posture parallel to the one He occupies in the Ur-kenosis. He adopts the position of a servant. He is subservient to His parents (Lk. 2:51), and He washes the feet of His disciples (Jn. 13:15). He puts Himself at the service of society’s worst. He bends low to help fallen women (Jn. 8:6-8), He stoops down to lift up the lowly (Lk. 1:52). He is at the service of any and all who ask for His assistance (e.g., Lk. 8:28). He is willing, like a Good Shepherd, to lay down His life for His sheep (Jn. 10:15). He goes to any lengths to help those in need (cf. Mt. 8:7). His life is literally and figuratively poured out for others (Phil. 2:6-11; cf. Mk. 14:24), so determined is Jesus to have His relationship with us resemble and reflect His eternal relationship with His Father.

In the end, therefore, Jesus banishes all vestiges of the false sacred.¹⁷ When Peter pleaded with Jesus, "Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man" (Lk. 5:8), Jesus would have none of it. Jesus said to him, Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men (Lk. 5:10). Similarly here: when John the Baptist protests "I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals," Jesus insists, Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus’ righteousness signals the end of sacred violence. He puts to death all visions of God as retributive, all views of religion as sacrificial. Instead, He comes to create a society of saints - holy ones - whose consecration in His truth will make them partakers of His own Ur-kenotic relationship of trustful surrender to His Father. Once this transformation has taken place, the New Jerusalem will appear, resplendent in the glory of the Lamb who is its Light (Rev. 21:23). With St. Paul they those who have been taken with Jesus will exclaim, What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor. 2:9).

Matthew 3:11

I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me… will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

The contrast between Jesus and John the Baptist can never be overdone. John and Jesus are not equals. There is no theological equivalence between any of their statements or actions. Jesus is not only mightier than the Baptist; there is no comparison between them. John’s words and actions can only be properly understood in light of the unprecedented Revelation that is the Mystery of Christ. Jesus is not the fulfillment of John’s predictions; John’s role as Precursor can only be grasped for what it is in light of the Apocalypsis brought into the world by the Son of Man.

Hence, John says, I baptize you with water for repentance… "Water and repentance, for John will become wine and recreation" for Jesus. For John operates in the world of Bios, while Jesus operates in the world of Zoe.¹⁸ St. Paul describes these two worlds, as the world "of the flesh (1 Cor. 3:1-3) and of world of the spirit (Rom. 7:2; 8:6) Or, as Jesus would say to Nicodemus, That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). St. Paul also said, "To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace" (Rom. 8:6). Similarly, it is death to our theological imagination if we envision the baptism Jesus gives with that which John was offering. Everything pictured in John’s baptism is, as it were, a watered down version of what Jesus comes to give.

There are many other seminal differences between John and Jesus. John is all about repentance, Jesus is all about recreation. John is about sin, Jesus is about sanctity. John is about remorse, Jesus is about regeneration. John is about morality, Jesus is about metamorphosis. John calls to repentance, Jesus initiate us into the Trinitarian Life of God. John is embedded in a transactional model of religion, Jesus comes to instantiate us into a transfigured relationship with Himself, His Father, and Their deifying Holy Spirit. What John enjoins by way of repentance is like water compared to the inebriating elixir of deification that Jesus offers in communion with Himself.

For Christians, the Eucharist is the culmination