After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened (for him), and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove (and) coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Moved by these words taken from the Gospel of Matthew, the friars of the Holy Land, led by the Custos Father, Pierbattista Pizzaballa and accompanied by the whole community of the Jerusalem parish, joined by many pilgrims from Europe and Latin America, as well as by many religious, went, as they do every year towards the end of October, to the West Bank of the River Jordan, to contemplate the salvific mystery of the baptism of Jesus. To the singing of psalms of praise and tanks for the goodness of God to men and His people, the procession went to the place where the Eucharist was celebrated, with the liturgy animated by young Franciscan students and the voices of a large Hungarian choir that had come to Jerusalem in pilgrimage. The Custos, during the liturgy of the baptism, recalled the teaching of the apostle Paul, all of us, through baptism, were buried with Christ in death and just as he rose from the dead, we too have to walk in the new life of the Spirit, knowing that our old man was crucified with Christ, so that we would no longer be slaves of sin. At the end of the renewal of the promises of the holy baptism, the singing of psalm 50, Miserere, accompanied the aspersion of holy water on to the participants in the celebration. This was a particularly touching moment as it was celebrated on the same banks of the river that contemplated the passage of the Lamb of God. This stretch of the river was also the scene of many significant events linked to the Scriptures: in particular the passage oft he people of Israel guided by Joshua, making its entrance into the Promised Land and the episode of Elias being taken to heaven on the fiery chariot, pulled by horses of fire, before the astonished eyes of his disciple Elisha. These events are related in the Scriptures, respectively in the Book of Joshua and in the Second Book of Kings. At the end of the Holy Mass, the pilgrimage continued to the places commemorating the forty days spent by Jesus in the desert after baptism in the waters of the Jordan and the temptations of Jesus, by the Evil One, on the mountain that according to tradition is called Quarantine Mount, in Arabic Jebel Qarantinata. The mountain dominates the present-day city of Jericho, only a few kilometres from the ruins of the various other ancient cities of Jericho, built and destroyed several times over the course of the centuries, near to one another, including the one that stood in the time of Jesus and witnessed his passage and a number of his miracles, as we are told in the Gospels. A picturesque Greek Orthodox monastery is also built on the mountainside. Against the beautiful backdrop of the oasis, at the foot of the mounting, whilst most of the pilgrims walked along the stony path that leads to the monastery in the splendid setting of the Judea desert, a small group halted at the foot of two centenary sycamore trees that had grown near Elisha’s spring, where the prophet’s second miracle took place, after the miracle of dividing the waters of the Jordan. The spring in the Jericho oasis was polluted and caused poor crops, miscarriages and deaths. When the people asked for help, Elisha ordered a new saucepan to be filled with salt and then threw it into the spring. Then he announced that the Lord had made these waters healthy: the spring had been purified and the life of the whole city is still linked to it today. Lastly, remembering the forty days spent by Jesus on the mountain, as Mark tells us in his Gospel “He was with the wild beasts and the angels served him,” nobody could fail to remember Isaiah’s prophecy: “The wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall graze together with a little child to guide them”. The prophecy of a reconciled world made of unity and love, fraternity and reconciliation which was fulfilled in the person of Jesus: “Here it is, the kingdom of God in your midst.”
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