Martène and Durand, Benedictine monks of the congregation of St. Maur, are to be held very well deserving of St. Maximus, since they published this sermon and five others found in the papers of Mabillon, as was said above. To these is added the testimony of the codex of St. Gall, no. 87, attributing it to Maximus, and of the codex of Turin, no. 43. Wherefore we too ascribe a sermon of this kind to that same holy prelate. There is added also the connexion of this with the preceding. Your holiness retains, brethren, what we said on the day of the most festive Epiphany, that the Lord was baptized in the Jordan, and we pursued the point that He willed to be consecrated by this mystery more for our sake than for His own. Plainly for our sake He accomplished all these things.
For to Him what profit was the necessary consecration, who is Himself the sacrament? To what use was the solemnity of a mystery in Him, in whom is the fullness of the mystery? For in Him is the fullness, as the Apostle says: 'For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily' (Col. II, 9). And again the Evangelist: 'Of His fullness we have all received' (John I). Therefore He in whom was the fullness of the Godhead had no need to be filled by the mysteries of the sacraments. But He willed to fulfil the mystery for this reason, not that He Himself might gain profit, but that the fullness of the mystery might profit us. In short, to John the Baptist, who resisted and said: 'I ought to be baptized by Thee, and comest Thou to me?' the Lord said to him:
'Suffer it now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness' (Matt. III). 'To fulfil,' He says, 'all righteousness.' Why then is the Lord baptized? Righteousness does not justify Christ, but righteousness itself is sanctified by Christ, and a half-full virtue is filled by Him in whom is the fullness of virtues. John therefore says: 'I ought to be baptized by Thee'; he thus attests that the Lord was not baptized for His own sake, since before He was baptized by him, John was demanding rather to be baptized by Him. For he shows this by his saying, that there is greater grace in the mystery of the Lord than in the master of the mystery. For what consecration could he impart to Him, from whom he himself desired to receive sanctification?
For the master was inferior in merits to the disciple in holiness; for in comparison with Christ the master too was unskilled, the righteousness only half-complete, and the water turbid. But when the Lord is baptized, by His blessing both the master advances, and righteousness is fulfilled, and the wave is purified. For the wave has been purified, which, though it was cheap and cold, was enriched by the warmth of the Lord's blessing: so that what before could scarcely wash away the worldly stains of things now purifies the spiritual stains of souls. And do not marvel that we say water, that is, a bodily substance, reaches to the purifying of the soul. It reaches indeed; it penetrates all the hiding-places of the conscience.
For although the water itself is subtle and thin, yet made subtler by Christ's blessing, through the hidden channels of life it passes as a dewy spirit against the sins of the soul. For the flow of blessings is subtler than the passage of waters. Hence we have also said that in the Saviour's baptism the blessing, which flowed down like a special river, imbued the courses of all the deeps and the veins of all the springs. For it is a marvel, I say, that while Christ was set in the Jordan, the streams of waters indeed were washed; but the currents of blessings also ran, and from thence the eddy of the channel was borne more turbulent.
Hence the most pure fountain of the Saviour cleansed, and by a certain amazement the consecration of baptism ascended downward toward the source of the Jordan, and against the river of waters the river of blessings was borne. Whence I judge holy David to have said: The Jordan was turned back (Ps. 114). For in Christ's baptism the Jordan was turned back not by waters but by sacraments, and returned to its own origin more by blessing than by substance. For while the grace of consecration was carried through it to all the springs, it seems to have called back its own course to the beginning of the veins. It ends.