Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Epiphany and creation
Epiphany and creation
Mar 17, 2025 4:14 AM

Today, Orthodox Christians all over the world are celebrating Epiphany, one of the great feast days of the Eastern Church.

Epiphany is, for the Orthodox, the manifestation of the Lord’s divinity and the mystery of the Trinity, the inauguration of the sacrament of baptism, and the beginning of the preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven. For the Orthodox, Epiphany is also a profoundly ecological moment. Churches hold Blessing of the Waters services memorate Christ’s baptism in the Jordan River, an event that transformed not just earthly Creation, but the entire cosmos.

In a 1991 article, Bishop Irineos Pop of the Romanian Orthodox Church wrote, “The blessing of the waters shows us the sanctifying and redemptive power given to an element of creation through the invocation of the Holy Spirit by the Church. What is important for us, however, is that the baptismal water represents the matter of the cosmos, the world as life of man. And its blessing at the beginning of the baptismal rite acquires thus a truly cosmic and redemptive significance. God created the world and blessed it and gave it to us as our food and life, as the means munion with him. The blessing of water signifies the return or redemption of matter to this initial and essential meaning. By accepting the baptism of John, Christ sanctified the water – made it the water of purification and reconciliation with God. It was then, as Christ ing out of the water, that the Epiphany – the new and redemptive manifestation of God – took place, and the Spirit of God, who at the beginning of creation “moved upon the face of the waters”, made water – that is, the world – again into what He made it at the beginning.”

The Armenian Orthodox writer Vigen Guroian observes that “the Orthodox rites of blessing show how closely ecology is related to the theological notion of oikonomia in Eastern theology. The object of the divine economy is the oikoumene — the whole inhabited Earth. For, as the Psalmist says, “The Earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world, and those who dwell therein (Ps. 24:1, RSV). Orthodox theology founds this cosmic scope of the divine nurture and restoration and renewal of creation in the Incarnation.”

His All-Holiness Ecumencial Patriarch Bartholomew is in Tarpon Springs, Fla., today to celebrate Epiphany. Information about his visit, including a live Webcast of the Partriarchal Liturgy, is linked here.

Today the grace of the Holy Spirit, hallowing the water, es co-worker (with Christ our God).

Today the heavens gaily bedew from above with the dew of grace, and today shone forth on us the sun inextinguishable, and all the world is radiant with light.

Today the moon beams forth with a great light, and withal the world is filled with splendor.

Today the light-clad luminaries work hearty good unto all that dwell on earth.

— From the Armenian prayer for Epiphany

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Farewell, Father Neuhaus
First Things has announced that Father Richard John Neuhaus died this morning. I am hardly qualified to write a eulogy, having never met the man. No doubt others, including one or two Acton colleagues who knew him better, will perform this service admirably. But I pelled to offer a few words, as I have long admired Fr. Neuhaus and his vital work, in particular the journal he edited for many years, First Things (FT). In the mid-1990s, I was a...
Conservative/Libertarian Books for the Acton Reader
It is the new year and the time of reflection is upon us. In 2008, we witnessed a revolutionary left-liberal presidential victory and the onset of substantial economic challenges. Under the circumstances, I thought now might be a good time to propose a list of outstanding books for the intellectually curious friend or fellow traveler. I would not dare attempt to put these in order based on excellence. Just consider it a series of number ones. 1. Lancelot by Walker...
Movie Review: Valkyrie
The year is 1943 and Valkyrie, the second release under the revamped United Artists brand, opens with German officer Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) on assignment in Africa. He had been sent there because his opposition to Hitler and the Nazi regime had e dangerously explicit and bellicose. His promotion to lieutenant-colonel of the general staff and transfer from the European lines to Africa is intended to give him some protection from pro-Nazi officers who might make trouble for him....
Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor and the ‘Death’ of Capitalism
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, has touched off a row over remarks he made recently concerning the demise of capitalism. Here’s the context from the Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper: [the Cardinal] made the astonishing claim at a lavish fund-raising dinner at Claridges which secured pledges of hundreds of thousands of pounds for the catholic church. The Cardinal, dressed in his full clerical regalia, said in...
Book Review: My Grandfather’s Son
Perhaps the most striking theme of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’s autobiography My Grandfather’s Son is just how many obstacles Thomas had to e to reach the high judicial position he currently holds. Thomas was born into poverty, abandoned by his father, and was raised in the segregated South all before achieving the American Dream. At the same time, it was Thomas’s poverty-stricken circumstances that would help propel him to a world of greater opportunity. Because of his mother’s poverty, when...
Acton Commentary: A Second Opinion on Employer Responsibility for Heath Care
Health care reform is likely to move back into the public eye as a new Congress and a new Obama administration prepare to start work this month. In this week’s Acton Commentary, Dr. Don Condit argues for a move away from employer funded health care benefits to a portable system. “Corporate human resources departments should not be viewed as the main source of support for Americans’ health care,” he writes. “The iniquitous government subsidy for employer-based health care could be...
Ignorance, Humility, and Economics
I like Robert Samuelson’s recent column about the difficulty (impossibility?) of accurately analyzing economic reality, let alone predicting its future. Over the past several months a few people, mistaking me for someone who knows a great deal about economics, have asked what I think about the financial crisis, the stock market, the recession, etc. My response is usually something along the lines of the following: Anyone who pretends to know and pletely the causes of the economic meltdown and/or how...
One Good Thing about Term Limits
I’m ambivalent about the value of term limits, but one thing that can certainly be counted in their favor is that they (at some point at least), force lawmakers to go out and try to make a living in the economic environment which they helped to shape. In Michigan, nearly half of the 110-member House of Representatives will consist of new members. Of the 46 new members, 44 ing from seats that were open because of term limits. And now...
Remembering Father Richard John Neuhaus
For those concerned with a vigorous intellectual engagement of the religious idea with the secular culture, these past 12 months have been a difficult period. On February 28, 2008, William F. Buckley, Jr. the intellectual godfather of the conservative movement in America, died. Only last month, Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, passed away at 90 years old. Cardinal Dulles was one of the Catholic Church’s most prominent theologians, a thinker of great subtlety, and a descendent from a veritable American Brahmin...
Summing Up a Great Man’s Life
Richard John Neuhaus is dead. We’ve lost some big ones in the last year. Many of you will not realize how big this one was. I pray Jody Bottum and some of the others in the First Things (Neuhaus’ hugely influential journal) world can carry on his legacy. Though Neuhaus’ death leaves a chasm to be filled, I think Dr. Bottum is the right man for it. Anthony Sacramone is a former managing editor of First Things. He is also...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved