BAPTISM of JESUS. — The scene narrated by the Synoptics (Mt. 3:13–17; Mk. 1:9–13; Lk. 3:21–22) and mentioned by John (Io. 1:32–34) can easily be reconstructed as follows: at about thirty years of age (Lk. 3:23), Jesus sets out from Nazareth, presents himself at the Jordan amid the crowd that has gathered at the Baptist’s word, and asks to be baptized as well (Mt. 3:15). When he comes out of the water and is immersed in prayer (Lk. 3:22), the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove and comes to rest upon him, and a voice proclaims: «This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased». In the dove the Baptist perceives the tangible, «bodily» sign (Lk. 3:22) of the descent of the Holy Spirit and understands that the one whom he has just baptized is the Son of God (Io. 1:33–34).
The baptism of Jesus is therefore: 1) The consecration of Jesus’ messianic mission. That descent of the Holy Spirit, in fact, fulfilled two texts of Sacred Scripture regarded as messianic (Ps. 2:7; Is. 61; cf. also Is. 42:1); and the Forerunner himself had declared: «After me comes one who is greater than I... and precisely for this I have come baptizing in water, so that he might be manifested to Israel» (Io. 1:30). 2) A new proclamation of the natural sonship of the Incarnate Word. That the words «This is my beloved Son» must be understood in the sense of natural sonship and not simply adoptive sonship is required both by the text (Jesus is the son [ὁ υἱὸς μου] and the beloved son [ὁ ἀγαζητός], that is, not merely the dearest, but uniquely beloved, the only one [cf. J. Lebreton, Les origines du dogme de la Trinité, Paris 1919, pp. 3–38–39]) and by the context, when we consider them in the light of the identical expressions recurring in other episodes of Jesus’ life (e.g., in the virginal conception of the Word [Lk. 1:34–37], in the Transfiguration [Mt. 17:5], in the finding of Jesus in the Temple [Lk. 2:49], and in what the Messiah preached concerning himself and his relations with the Father, ever more openly as he drew nearer to the Passion [cf. J. Lebreton, ibid., p. 286 ff.]).
Many modern critics of the liberal Protestant school have wished to conclude from the episode of the baptism of Jesus that he received then for the first time the dignity of Messiah, or became conscious of it for the first time, or received divine sonship. But these interpretations are openly contrary to what St. John and St. Paul say about the pre-existence of the Word. Moreover, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon a person chosen by God for a particular mission does not in itself imply any divinization; it serves only to demonstrate a special impulse from God, as occurred with Othniel (Iud. 3:10), Gideon (Iud. 6:34), Jephthah (Iud. 11:29), Samson (Iud. 13:25), Balaam (Num. 24:2), Saul (I Sam. 10:6), etc.