Tag Archives: Epiphany

I contemplate holy snow.

Theophany, water, , ,

We have come to the Feast of Theophany, when we commemorate Christ’s baptism by John in the Jordan River. On this feast we have the Great Blessing of Water, which often is done outdoors at the ocean or a river or lake. I was interested to see a collection of photos from 2025, of Holy Theophany Church in Colorado Springs, a parish that I happened to visit a few years ago when my son Soldier’s family first moved to that state.

A few hardy members of the congregation trekked up to the crest of the Rocky Mountains, where along the invisible line that is the (hydrological) Continental Divide, or Great Divide, the rivers flow on one side toward the Pacific Ocean, and on the other toward the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, and to the Gulf of Mexico.

Christ blessed the waters of the entire earth when He was baptized in just one river, and renewed the nature of all of Creation, as one of the hymns below explains. To whatever extent we participate in His continuation of that blessing, whether we symbolically perform the rite on the water in an urn or lake or a single ocean, the blessing is equally cleansing and renewing.

Still, it is a joy to contemplate the blessing of many waters, so to speak — many, many rivers flowing into many oceans, from that snowy point in the mountains. Why not do this, if you can? It may be for the same reason we baptize by immersion, if we can, and not sprinkling.

I’ve seen many pictures of holes cut in the ice for this ceremony, but this is the first time I’ve seen its celebration without any liquid H2O at all. Below I will share a few lines from various portions of Orthodox Theophany services, and a few more photos of my brothers and sisters in Colorado.

Thou didst wrap Thyself in the streams of the Jordan,
Who dost clothe Thyself in light as with a garment;
in the waters, O Word of God, Thou didst renew the nature of Adam
broken by wicked disobedience.
Therefore we praise Thee and glorify Thy holy Epiphany.

Jesus, the Source of life,
came to free from condemnation Adam the first-formed man.
As God He needs no cleansing,
yet for the fallen He is cleansed in the Jordan.
In it He brings an end to hostility
and grants peace beyond all comprehension.

Sent from the Father, O most radiant Word,
Thou hast come to dispel the evil darkness of night
and to uproot the sins of mortals,
and to draw up by Thy baptism, O blessed Lord,
radiant children from the streams of the Jordan.

With piety and vigor let us run
to the pure springs of salvation’s stream
and gaze on the Word born of the all-Pure Virgin,
He gives living water to satisfy our holy thirst,
and gently heals the sickness of the world.


The true Light has shone forth granting enlightenment to all.
Though He is beyond all purity, Christ is baptized with us.
He sanctifies the water, and it becomes a cleansing for our souls.
What is seen is earthly, but what is known is above the heavens.
Through washing comes salvation, and through water comes the Spirit.
By descending into the water we ascend to God.
Thy works are wonderful, O Lord, glory to Thee!

Illuminations on this January weekend.

church, poetry, Psalms, Theophany, , , ,

At Vespers last night, the lighting was unusual, in that electric lights had been turned on in the dome; typically we do without those, and in the winter it means that we see the icon of the Pantocrator only dimly. Because the amount of light, and the angle at which it enters through the cathedral windows, is always in flux, every service at every time of day is differently illumined — but the effect is always sublime.

Over the last two days, at church and on my neighborhood path, I was warmed by the beauty of physical lights, not separate from their symbolic role: They represent and mysteriously convey the presence of Christ Who is, as the Evangelist said, “The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

Today was the Leavetaking of Theophany, and I was the chanter of the Third and Sixth Hour prayers before the service. On Sundays we always have hymns of the Resurrection, and usually hymns of that Sunday’s feast or saints as well. It was the Kontakion of Theophany that got my attention this morning:

On this day Thou hast appeared unto the whole world,
And Thy light, O Sovereign Lord,
is signed on us who sing Thy praise,
and chant with knowledge:
Thou hast now come, Thou hast appeared,
O Light Unapproachable.

As soon as I returned after church, I (shock!!!) changed my clothes and went for a walk. We had been surprised by the sun coming out in the afternoon, so it was delightful out there. Even though the creek was muddy from rain, the light shining on it made it lovely.

And I practiced Psalm 89 some more. Reading the same lines and stanzas over and over, thinking of links to help me transition from one thought to another, has been the most rewarding kind of meditation; the theology and the poetry fill my heart, certainly in much  the same way as one line states:

We were filled in the morning with Thy mercy, O Lord,
And we rejoiced and were glad.

But this line is in the latter half of the psalm, when the mood has turned upward. A few stanzas before, the psalmist is considering how in the evening man “shall fall and grow withered and dry.” “We have fainted away,” “our days are faded away… our years like a spider have spun out their tale,” and “Return, O Lord, how long?”

Withered and dry, but still handsome.

I have looked at two other translations of the Psalm, one of them a different version of the Septuagint, and compared with the one I am using (see sidebar note), to me they both are clunky and harder to read, though they do have many of the same vivid images that help me to learn this poem.

I stopped a couple of times on my walk to sit on a bench and think about these things. And when I got home again I looked at the notes in the Orthodox Study Bible, which points out that this is “a morning prayer designed to keep one focused on the Lord rather than on this temporal life and its hopelessness. For He exists outside time, and is therefore our only refuge…. It is read daily at the First Hour.” 

There are many references to morning and evening, days and years, and our lifespan being “in the light of Thy countenance.” But one reason I have wanted to learn the whole prayer poem is the last verse, whose first line brings me back to “Thy light is signed on us” in the hymn we read and sang this morning:

And let the brightness of the Lord our God be upon us,
and the works of our hands do Thou guide aright upon us,
Yea, the work of our hands do Thou guide aright.