When the Saviour emerges from the water after his immersion, the heavens open and the Spirit of God descends from above in the form of a shining white dove. And the voice of God the Father himself is heard from heaven: "This is my beloved Son, and I am well pleased with him".
Here, in this scene, the Old Testament ends and the Good News begins, the Holy Gospel - the New Testament, unknown to all, the philosopher points out.
John the Baptist waited for the Messiah, the Saviour, received the news of his arrival and went to meet him, away from the people, in the desert, to repent and purify himself. By repenting and purifying himself, he purified others, but he waited for the Man. The last prophet, though denounced by a higher power, waited for the King who would restore Israel. He was a Jew, the best of Jews, the highest of Jews, the most honest of prophets, but... he was still a Jew and only that, it was not a prophet or a king who came to him to be baptised in the Jordan, but God himself. And God was not archly and incomprehensibly unified - monotheistic - but Living and, moreover, Tri-hypostatic. John the Baptist immediately saw and heard all the Persons of the Holy Trinity, which no one could ever have seen. Before him, coming out of the water, stood God the Son Himself in the flesh. From the open heavens descended "in a vision of a dove" the Holy Spirit, God who comes from the Father himself, and the voice of the Father, speaking directly to John and through him to the Jews, the Hellenes and all mankind, said: "This is my beloved Son, and I am well pleased with him".
God revealed himself as he had never revealed himself before. He became man in three persons, an infinite light, clothed in holy and transfigured human flesh. This is already the New Testament. The Old Testament ends here, at this point in time and space, at the moment of the Lord's baptism in the ancient river Jordan. Our time begins, the time of Christ and of us Christians, he emphasises.
The hole in which we immerse ourselves on the night of Epiphany is called the Jordan, and the water in this hole becomes the same water in which the Saviour himself - the eternal God - was baptised. Thus, by celebrating Epiphany, we celebrate the uncreated divine Trinity, our salvation revealed and the world transformed, enlightened, purified and sanctified - its rivers, its luminaries, its earth and its winds.
