Tag Archives: Epiphany

Royal Hours of Theophany

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Ravenna, 6th Century

 

The service of Royal Hours of Theophany, which we prayed this evening as part of the forefeast of baptism of Christ, is so rich; it “brings the mind into the heart,” as we say. We read and sang several Old Testament readings, as many Epistle and Gospel Readings, and many Psalms chosen for the feast. When I came home afterward I found the liturgical texts online, hoping to hold on to the “afterglow” a little longer. Tomorrow we will continue our celebration of this major feast, on through the 7th.

 

Here are a very few portions of the service:

To the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
“Prepare the way of the Lord,”
Thou didst come, O Lord, taking the form of servant.
Thou didst ask to be baptized
though Thou hast no knowledge of sin.
The waters saw Thee and were afraid.
The Forerunner trembled and cried aloud:
“How will the Lamp illumine the Light?
How will a servant lay his hand on the Master?
Thou takest away the sin of the world, O Savior.
Sanctify both me and the waters!”

From the Psalter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, c. 1185

The Father bore witness to Thee,
and the Divine Spirit in the form of a dove
descended to Thee,
as Thou camest in flesh to the Jordan, O Lord.
Thou didst desire to be baptized in human form,
that in Thy compassion
Thou mightest enlighten us who have gone astray,
and deliver us from all the snares and wiles of the Dragon.
Make Thy home in our souls, O Thou Who lovest mankind.


Therefore with joy shall ye draw water
out of the wells of salvation.

And in that day shall ye say, Praise the Lord,
call upon his name, declare his doings among the people,
make mention that his name is exalted.

Sing unto the Lord; for he hath done excellent things:
this is known in all the earth.

Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion:
for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee.

Isaiah 12:3-6

Ethiopia

Titus 3

4 But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
6 Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
7 That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Shorten winter by this holy vitality.

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In my Orthodox Christian household we have been enjoying our Christmas holy days, which just began on the 25th. I am keeping in mind the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton, who said, “The best way to shorten winter is to prolong Christmas.” That is, as you will remember, the opposite of what the witch did in Narnia, when she cast a spell making it “always winter but never Christmas.”

Hilaire Belloc wrote a lovely piece in 1928 about the way his house kept Christmas throughout the Twelve Days, titled “A Remaining Christmas,” and Hearth and Field has kindly republished it. There are naturally some things we do differently in my tradition, such as, we have Theophany at the end of the Twelve Days, and in the West it is Epiphany. But it is the same story that compels us to “Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4) Here is one paragraph:

“Now, you must not think that Christmas being over, the season and its glories are at an end, for in this house there is kept up the full custom of the Twelve Days, so that ‘Twelfth Day’, the Epiphany, still has, to its inhabitants, its full and ancient meaning as it had when Shakespeare wrote. The green is kept in its place in every room, and not a leaf of it must be moved until Epiphany morning, but on the other hand not a leaf of it must remain in the house, nor the Christmas tree either, by Epiphany evening. It is all taken out and burnt in a special little coppice reserved for these good trees which have done their Christmas duty; and now, after so many years, you might almost call it a little forest, for each tree has lived, bearing witness to the holy vitality of unbroken ritual and inherited things.”

I didn’t get my greenery and full decorations up until Christmas Eve, so we are definitely leaving those for a while yet. Of course we have been nibbling away on the remains of our culinary feast, and I play carols in the car, and in the house when I remember.

Yesterday the younger house guests and I had a thoroughly sugary and creative session of decorating those gingerbread cookies we’d cut out on the Second Day. Also on the Third Day an impromptu Christmas tea party happened here, when more friends stopped by, and their children played my piano, which I know it was longing for. I brought out my real teacups, and twelve of us squeezed around the table to eat more Christmas cookies and drain the contents of four teapots. “Christ is born!”

On this Fourth Day, I listened to a wonderful story by Chesterton, read by Fr. Malcolm Guite, “The Shop of Ghosts.” It starts with visions seen through a toy shop window, and continues with a conversation with Father Christmas. Thank you, Mr. Chesterton, for helping us to prolong Christmas. It will never die.

I found that Belloc essay, which you can read here: “A Remaining Christmas,” along with his poem I am sharing below. If you want more commentary on the poem, this article by Joseph Pearce might be a good place to start. In it he also mentions T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi.” I had thought to post this compilation of Things Christmastide closer to Twelfth Night, but it seems to want to go out now, I guess to help us make the most of the days to come. If we are weary from the busyness that accompanied us to the manger, let’s stay there a while and worship, and find rest.

TWELFTH NIGHT

As I was lifting over Down
A winter’s night to Petworth Town,
I came upon a company
Of Travellers who would talk with me.

The riding moon was small and bright,
They cast no shadows in her light:
There was no man for miles a-near.
I would not walk with them for fear.

A star in heaven by Gumber glowed,
An ox across the darkness lowed,
Whereat a burning light there stood
Right in the heart of Gumber Wood.

Across the rime their marching rang,
And in a little while they sang;
They sang a song I used to know,
Gloria
In Excelsis Domino.

The frozen way those people trod
It led towards the Mother of God;
Perhaps if I had travelled with them
I might have come to Bethlehem.

-Hilaire Belloc

The swallow brings divine tidings.

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A good many Orthodox Christians are celebrating Christmas today.
With them I say, “Christ is born and God is with us! Happy Feast!”

(Though I hope they are not looking at the computer today!) BUT – I am among those who celebrated the last two weeks, and have just completed the Twelve Days, and Theophany…  So, we come to the Synaxis of the Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John.

From The Orthodox Church in America:

“In the Orthodox Church it is customary, on the day following the Great Feasts of the Lord and the Mother of God, to remember those saints who participated directly in the sacred event. So, on the day following the Theophany of the Lord, the Church honors the one who participated directly in the Baptism of Christ, placing his own hand upon the head of the Savior.

“Saint John, the holy Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord, whom the Lord called the greatest of the prophets, concludes the history of the Old Testament and opens the era of the New Testament. The holy Prophet John bore witness to the Only-Begotten Son of God, incarnate in the flesh. Saint John was accounted worthy to baptize Him in the waters of the Jordan, and he was a witness of the Theophany of the Most Holy Trinity on the day of the Savior’s Baptism.

“The holy Prophet John, the son of the Priest Zachariah and Righteous Elizabeth, was related to the Lord on His mother’s side. The holy Forerunner John was born six months before Christ. The Archangel Gabriel announced his birth in the Temple at Jerusalem, revealing to Zachariah that a son was to be born to him.

“Through the prayers offered beforehand, the child was filled with the Holy Spirit. Saint John prepared himself in the wilds of the desert for his great service by a strict life, by fasting, prayer and sympathy for the fate of God’s people.

“At the age of thirty, he came forth preaching repentance. He appeared on the banks of the Jordan, to prepare the people by his preaching to accept the Savior of the world. In church hymnology, Saint John is called a “bright morning star,” whose gleaming outshone the brilliance of all the other stars, announcing the coming dawn of the day of grace, illumined with the light of the spiritual Sun, our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Having baptized the sinless Lamb of God, Saint John soon died a martyr’s death, beheaded by the sword on orders of King Herod at the request of his daughter Salome.”

As the lover of the Spirit,
the swallow that brings divine tidings of grace, O Forerunner,
thou hast made known clearly to mankind the dispensation of the King,
Who shone forth in brightness from a pure Virgin for the restoration of man.
Thou dost banish the dominion of dark and evil ways,
and guide the hearts of those baptized in repentance to eternal life,
O blessed Prophet inspired by God!

 -Hymn of the Feast

We are watered by mystical streams.

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“Today the whole creation is watered by mystical streams.”THP1120160crp

This was one of the lines from the rich 7th-century composition of Patriarch Sophronios of Jerusalem, which was among the readings of Theophany and the Great Blessing of Water that we heard yesterday. More than ever before, I experienced the feast as a shining of The Light of the World and the refreshment of The Living Water, partly because of words like this in the service.

The quantity of verbal expression of various aspects of our faith is really overwhelming, and I can only process what seems to be a small fragment, each time when the different feasts roll around again.

First we celebrated Divine Liturgy in our “big church.” I had the same experience as last week, in the way the morning sun streamed down through a high window and hit me in the face. This time I wasn’t completely blinded; if I squinted just so, the candles and lamps flickering around the church appeared, for those few minutes, as they might outdoors on a foggy night, perhaps carried by worshipers in a procession of the “Feast of Lights.”

It happens that a photo was posted to our parish Facebook page, taken by someone who was there that day last week, and it shows the church with the bright beam that angled across the altar and nave and fell on me. Mr. Glad said, “You need to find another place to stand,” and I answered, “Oh, no, I like it when that happens.” Actually, I don’t often get to be in that place.TH ray of sunlight 1-2-15crp Both times I was on the left in front of a pillar. On Theophany, when the light was coming in the chandeliers were also being set swinging nearby; we were singing a hymn, and the sweetest incense was beautifying the air to honor the Lord.

After Liturgy we processed to the “little church” for The Blessing of Water, accompanied by the bells and singing together. The service opens with:

THP1120222light and water 15“The voice of the Lord upon the waters cries out, saying, ‘Come all of you, receive the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of the fear of God, of Christ who has appeared.’”

We heard multiple readings from Isaiah such as, “Ho, everyone that thirsts: come ye to the water.”

And more images from the exuberant service of blessing:

The land and the sea have divided between them the joy of the Lord….

King of all, you accepted also to be baptized in the Jordan by the hand of a servant, so that, having sanctified the nature of the waters, you, the sinless one, might make a way for our rebirth through water and Spirit and re-establish us in our original freedom.

The Jordan turned back and the mountains leapt as they saw God in thetheophany light and water pouring 15 flesh, and the clouds uttered their voice, marveling at what had come to pass, seeing Light from Light, true God from true God, the Master’s festival today in Jordan; seeing him drowning the death from disobedience, the goad of error and the bond of Hell in Jordan and granting the Baptism of salvation to the world.

On the home front, Theophany was the day Mr. Glad wanted to take down the Christmas tree. I resisted that idea for a long time, though I tried not to reveal my stubbornness. We had an easier time getting it out than we’d had installing it.

This morning coming downstairs I was startled by the bare space where the tree had been, but I quickly thought of how we have entered the season of house blessings, when by prayer and faith we will receive much more than we have lost — indeed, a different order of gifts, the “mystical streams” that are so hard to capture in words but impart the very Light of Christ Himself.

Christ Himself told us about these realities, as we read in the Gospel of John, when he said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water’….whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

This is the best way to enter a new year.