The first thing John the Baptist proclaims is repentance. What is repentance? In Greek, this word means turn: the turn of the soul, the turn of life. This is the moment when we become aware of our plight, when we feel disgust for it and for ourselves, when suddenly a determination is born in us, at least rudimentarily, to rebuild, to start anew and live in a new way. You've probably heard the phrase in the New Testament: faith without works is dead (see James 2:17). Crying is not enough, moreover, it is fruitless. Repentance is about coming to consciousness, making a decision, and acting accordingly. And here I can give you an excerpt from the teaching of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. He advises a young priest to tell people that for the most part one goes to the Kingdom of God not from victory to victory, but from fall to fall, but that he reaches the Kingdom of God who, after each fall, instead of sitting down by the side of the road and weeping over himself, gets up and goes on; And no matter how much he falls, each time he rises and walks. This is what we must always remember: that there is no such thing as complete, instantaneous repentance. Yes, of course, some souls, some giants of the spirit, can suddenly realize their sinfulness and change the whole course of their lives at once, but for the most part we correct it gradually, step by step. Let us remember what St. Tikhon of Zadonsk says: do not weep over yourself, get up and walk, even in tears, even in terror, but walk without stopping.

But what can shake the soul so much that a person decides to change everything in his life? I can give you a few examples. First, when I was a prison chaplain in London, I met a prisoner who, unlike the others, had a joyful face, a kind of hope in him. At first I thought that his term was ending, but it was just beginning. I asked him: "Where did you get such inspiration?" He answered: "You can't understand this. I have been a thief since my youth, and a talented thief; no one could catch me, no one could denounce me. But gradually I began to realize that I was on the wrong path. I began to see the consequences of my actions, to see how the people I had robbed mourned things that were precious to them, even if they were trinkets, but things that were dear to them, such as memories of childhood, of their deceased parents. I decided to change. But I noticed that every time I tried to change, people looked at me with suspicion: if he was changing, then there was something wrong with him... And each time I returned to the past. And then I was captured, I was caught in action, tried, imprisoned, and now everyone knows that I was a thief; And when I come back to life, I can say: yes, I was a thief, but now I have decided to be an honest person, I have nothing to hide from anyone."

This is a rare case, not everyone succeeds. Seldom is there a thief among us; But who among us can say that he does not have such secrets in life that he would like to hide from other people in all areas, not only in the order of honesty, but also in terms of human relations. I do not want to go into this now, we will return to this in connection with some other statement of the Savior Christ. But each of us can ask himself: do I have the courage to denounce myself in front of people? — not even by proclaiming my untruth, but by the fact that people will notice that I am not what I was.

The second example I want to give you is a complicated one. It refers to two people. During the Civil War, a Russian woman with two young children found herself in a city that was at first under the rule of the White Army and fell under the rule of the Reds. She was the wife of a White officer and knew that if she was discovered, she would probably be shot. She hid in a hut on the edge of the city. Dusk was falling, and suddenly there was a knock at the door. With a sinking heart, she approached, opened it, and in front of her stood a young woman of her own age, about twenty-five. "Are you so-and-so?" she asked. "Yes." "You must leave immediately, you have been extradited, they will come for you in a few hours..." The mother looked at her children and said: "Where am I going, they can't go far, and with them they will immediately recognize me..." And this Natalia, a strange woman, suddenly became what the Gospel calls neighbor: that is, the closest person in life and death. She told her: "No, they will not look for you, I will stay here and call myself by your name." "But you will be shot!" - "Yes," said Natalia, "but I have no children." And the mother left with the children. Natalia stayed. Early in the morning, at dawn, she was shot. I knew my mother and two children, who were about my age. They told me: "Natalia's act showed us that we must live in such a way as to be worthy of this sacrifice." Death before the due date, the gift of life, the gift of her life, which was made to them by the unknown Natalia, shook them to the depths, they lived all their lives with only one thought: lest Natalia's death deprive the world of that greatness, that truth, that indescribable spiritual beauty that was in her soul. They were so shocked that a new life began for them.

And those people who met John the Baptist met not only with his power (I have already spoken about this), with his transparency, which made him only the voice of God, or with his humility; They met with uncompromising attitude in his person, with a man of radical integrity. Seeing him, they could compare themselves with what he was, and this was an incentive for them to repent, that is, to see with horror their miserable condition and decide: I can no longer live like this, like this. I saw, I saw something that had already put an end to my past life, now a new one must begin.

Let us continue reading the Gospel of Mark:

And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And as he came up out of the water, immediately John saw the heavens opening up, and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (1:9-11).

The story, as you can see, is very schematic and short; I will fill it in with a passage from the Gospel of Matthew, where a fuller description of what happened is given:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. And John restrained Him, and said, I must be baptized by Thee, and dost Thou come to me? But Jesus answered and said to him, "Leave it now; for thus it behooves us to fulfill all righteousness. Then John admits Him. And having been baptized, Jesus immediately came up out of the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and descending upon Him. And behold, a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:13-17).

I want to say something about the baptism of Jesus Christ. People came to John to be baptized, confessing their sins. They came to John, shocked by his preaching, by the fact that there is truth on earth, that there is heavenly truth, that there is judgment on earth, the judgment of conscience; but in eternity is the judgment of God; and that he who does not reconcile with his conscience on this earth will become unanswerable before the judgment of God. St. John the Baptist spoke of repentance in this sense: turn to God, turn away from everything that captivates you, that makes you slaves to your passions, your fears, your greed, turn away from everything that is unworthy of you and about which your conscience tells you: no, this is too little, you are too big a being, too deep, too significant to simply give yourself over to these passions, these fears... But can something similar be said about Christ? We know that Christ was the Son of God not only in some figurative sense of the word, but in the most direct sense of the word. He was God, Who put on mankind, became incarnate. All the fullness of the Godhead, as the Apostle says, dwelt in Him bodily (cf. Col. 2:9); and is it conceivable that a human being, permeated by the Divine, as iron is permeated by fire, can at the same time be sinful, that is, cold, gloomy? Of course not; and therefore we affirm, we believe, we know by experience, that our Lord Jesus Christ was sinless as man, and as God was perfect in all things. Why did He need to be baptized? What's the point of that? The Gospel does not explain this, and we have the right to ask ourselves questions, we have the right to be perplexed, we have the right to think deeply about what this means.

Here is an explanation that an elderly priest once gave me. I was young then, and I put this question to him; and he said to me: you know, it seems to me that when people came to John, confessed their sins, their unrighteousness, all their impurity, both spiritual and physical, they seemed to symbolically wash it in the waters of the Jordan River. And its waters, which were pure, like all waters, gradually became defiled waters (as, you know, in Russian fairy tales it is said that there are dead waters, waters that have lost their vitality, which can only transmit death). These waters, saturated with human impurity, unrighteousness, human sin, human godlessness, gradually became dead waters, capable only of killing. And Christ plunged into these waters, because He wanted not only to become a perfect man, but He wanted, as a perfect man, to bear all the horror, all the weight of human sin. He was immersed in these dead waters, and these waters gave Him death, the mortality that belonged to those people who had sinned and carried mortality within them, death as the remnants of sin (see Romans 6:23), that is, the wages of sin. This is the moment when Christ partakes, not of our sin, but of all the consequences of this sin, including death itself, which, in some respects, has nothing to do with Him, because, as St. Maximus the Confessor says, it cannot be that a human being who is permeated by the Divinity is mortal. And indeed, the church hymn that we hear during Holy Week says: O Light, how do You go out? O Eternal Life, how do You die?.. Yes, He is eternal life, He is light, and He is extinguished by our darkness, and He dies our death. That is why He says to John the Baptist: "Leave me, do not hinder me from immersing myself in these waters, we must fulfill all righteousness, that is, everything that is just, everything that must be done for the salvation of the world, must be fulfilled by us now...

But why then does He come to the waters of baptism at the age of thirty, and not earlier and not later? Here again, we can think about what this could mean.

When God became man in the womb of His Mother, a one-sided act of God's wisdom and love was performed. The corporeality, the soulfulness, the humanity of the newborn Christ were, as it were, taken by God without them being able to resist. The Mother of God gave her consent to this: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be unto Me according to Thy word" (cf. Luke 1:38)... A Child was born, who was in the full sense of the word, man, that is, autocratic, with the right to choose between good and evil, with the right to choose between God and His adversary. And throughout His life—childhood, adolescence, adulthood—He matured in His total surrender to God. In His humanity, as a man, He took upon Himself all that God laid upon Him through the faith of the Mother of God, through Her giving of Himself and Him. He came at this moment to take upon Himself all that God, the Son of God, had taken upon Himself when He decided at the Pre-Eternal Council to create man and, when this man falls, to bear all the consequences of His primary act of creation and the terrible gift of freedom that was given to man. In the Slavonic text of the Old Testament, in the prophecy of Isaiah (see Isaiah 7:16), it is said about Christ that a Child will be born, Who, before He is able to distinguish good from evil, will choose good, because He is perfect in His humanity.

And so this Man Jesus Christ, growing to the fullness of His humanity, fully takes upon Himself what God has placed upon Him, what the faith of the Most-Pure Virgin Theotokos has placed upon Him. Plunging into these dead waters of the Jordan, He, like pure flax immersed in a dyehouse, enters snow-white and comes out, as it is said again in the prophecy of Isaiah, in a bloody garment, in the garment of death, which He must bear on Himself.