To the readers of the Kommersant newspaper – Kommersant Newspaper No. 9 (7454) of 01/19/2023
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Feast of Theophany, Baptism of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
On January 19, the Orthodox Church celebrates Holy Theophany, the Baptism of the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ. On this day, Christ revealed Himself to be God, presenting Himself as the Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God in the flesh.
January 6 (according to the Julian calendar), January 19 according to the new style, was not chosen by chance to celebrate this event. The mysterious understanding of Christ as the new Adam, the Founder of new times and new people, the Head of life and salvation, was opposed to Adam, the author of sin and death, whom God created on the sixth day (Gen. 1:2, 7). On the day of the Baptism of the Lord, God revealed Himself to the world in a trinity of Persons: God the Father – loudly testified: “You are My Beloved Son, in You I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22), Christ – was baptized from St. John the Baptist, and the Holy Spirit – descended against Him “in bodily form like a dove” (Luke 3:22). Based on this event, the Sacrament of Baptism was established, because “what is born of the flesh is flesh; but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). Therefore, the Holy Church performs baptism for the spiritual birth of a person.
Moreover, when Christ was baptized, He “sanctified the nature of the waters,” that is, he blessed the water as a means of deliverance from the original sin of the forefather Adam. Therefore, water has become a shrine that sanctifies people and the whole world. Christ became incarnate in order to open the way to the Kingdom of Heaven for man, which is not accessible to anyone who has not washed away the original and his own sins.
By His Baptism, Jesus Christ testified to the great truth of repentance. Christ told John the Baptist about this (Matt. 3:15) and began his sermon with the words: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). At the divine service on the feast of the Epiphany, excerpts from the Old Testament are read (paremias – from the Greek “parable”), they talk about a miraculous change in the properties of water. If in the terrible waters of the great flood all those who left God perished, and the earth, defiled to its very depths by human sin, was filled with wickedness, then on the day of the Baptism of the Lord, out of His love for the human race and for all of God’s creation, Christ, having plunged into the waters of the Jordan, takes on all the horror of human sin, and the water, personifying the image of death, turns into the water of life. Now baptismal water is able to purify and wash away sin, renew a person, make him a child of the Kingdom of God.
The Church calls the consecration of water on the feast of Epiphany the “Great Shrine” and calls on us to have water consecrated on Epiphany Eve and on the feast itself in our homes in case of illness, grief and attack by the forces of evil. The Great Shrine (Epiphany water) cleanses and renews us, sanctifies all creation. Glory to God that through His infinite mercy, through the God-man Christ, man and the world in which we live are renewed.
With the feast of the Holy Theophany, the Baptism of the Lord and Savior of our Jesus Christ!
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