(This post originally appeared in Dubuque’s Telegraph Herald on February 13th, 2016. See it online here).
As a priest in the historic Orthodox Church, one of my favorite times of year is what we call the Theophany (Epiphany) season. This season immediately follows Christmas in early January.
For 300 million eastern Christians around the world, this feast celebrates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River by St. John the Forerunner and Baptist.
This event is significant because this is the first time that God is revealed to be Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is what the name of the feast, Theophany, means: the manifestation of God.
Our primary hymn for this feast states it well, “At your baptism in the Jordan, O Lord, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest, for the Father’s voice bore You witness by calling you His beloved Son, and the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of the Father’s Word…”
But what makes this feast so fun for me, as a priest, is that I get to go around blessing everything and everyone with Holy Water!
The celebrations start with the community of believers gathered together. We bless Holy Water, which then gets distributed to the faithful in bottles – but only after I go around drenching the entire church with it!
Then we go and bless a live body of water. Here in Dubuque, we gathered and blessed the Mississippi River. In the Holy Land, the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem blesses the Jordan River, which then flows backwards for a short period of time!
I also go around to all my parishioners’ homes, and bless them with Holy Water there as well. This is a great time to catch up and see how they are all doing.
All of this is a lot of fun for both my parishioners and myself, but the question really becomes: what does all this mean? Why do we go around blessing water, and then blessing everything we can with that water?
I think that answer goes back to the name itself: Theophany.
As I mentioned before, this feast celebrates the manifestation of God as Trinity, but it also reveals something much more groundbreaking.
The baptism of Christ shows us a God who was willing to become a servant for our salvation. We see Christ bending his neck in servitude so that St. John can baptize him.
This act reveals a God who isn’t otherworldly and outside of creation. We see a God who was willing to become a part of creation, a God who becomes one with what he made.
By blessing water, Orthodox Christians are making a statement about God in the world. We’re saying that this water is holy because God entered into the world and was baptized in the waters of the Jordan River.
By blessing our homes, we’re saying that when God entered the world as a human, all of creation becomes sacred. This is an act of blessing, and it extends to the entire world around us.
The celebration of Theophany is our way of recognizing the sacredness in everyone and everything around us.
It’s also a challenge. God became a part of creation, so my challenge is to see Christ in all of it.
Can I see Christ in my neighbor when he or she supports the political candidate I despise, or can I even see Christ in that particular candidate?
Can I see Christ in the person who cuts me off at the stoplight?
Can I see Christ in nature so that I’m motivated to become a good steward of the resources I use?
Can I see Christ in the world around me so that I’m able to imitate his service in such a way that I make everything around me sacred as he made everything around him sacred?
Can I become one with everyone and everything around me?
My friends, knowing that God entered the world and then working with him to transform it into something sacred is the revelation of the feast of Theophany.
Lyon is from St. Elias The Prophet Church, in Dubuque, and is the author of many articles on www.dustinlyon.org.
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