Theophany: The Baptism of Christ

On 6 January the Church keeps Theophany — the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan by St John the Forerunner, at which the Holy Trinity is revealed: the Father’s voice from heaven, the Son in the waters, the Spirit descending as a dove. One of the most ancient of all feasts, it is celebrated with the Great Blessing of the Waters, by which Christ’s sanctification of the Jordan is extended to all creation.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Gospel event and the name

Theophany (Greek Theophaneia, “the manifestation of God”; also called Epiphaneia, Epiphany, and in Slavonic Bogoyavlenie) commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan (Matthew 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22). The Forerunner protests that he has need to be baptized by Christ, not Christ by him, but Jesus answers, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). As he comes up from the water, the heavens open: the Spirit of God descends “like a dove” and rests upon him, and a voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16–17). The feast’s very name fixes its meaning: it is the manifestation of God — not the manifestation of the Son alone, but of the whole Trinity, the first open showing of the three divine Persons together in the economy of salvation (Ware, in The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Ware, Faber, 1969, propers of the feast, pp. 348–387). The troparion names precisely this: “When Thou wast baptized in the Jordan, O Lord, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest: for the voice of the Father bore witness to Thee, calling Thee the beloved Son, and the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of His word” (troparion, Tone 1; The Festal Menaion, p. 356).

Why the sinless One is baptized

The theological problem the feast confronts is why the sinless Christ submits to a baptism of repentance. The Orthodox answer, worked out in the hymnography and the patristic homilies, is that Christ has no need of cleansing; rather, he cleanses. He does not receive purification from the waters — he gives it to them. Entering the Jordan, he sanctifies the whole nature of water, and through it all material creation, so that baptism may henceforth be a laver of regeneration; the emphasis falls not on Christ’s need but on the sanctification of matter and the manifestation of the Trinity (Ware, in The Festal Menaion, Introduction and propers; the theme is developed in the feast’s canons by Sts Cosmas and John of Damascus). The hymns picture the Jordan turning back in awe (Psalm 113/114:3, 5), the waters that received the sinless Lord fleeing before their Maker. Here the feast reaches toward Pascha: the descent into the water prefigures the descent into death and the rising that will make baptism a dying and rising with Christ (Romans 6:3–4; and see Pascha: The Feast of Feasts).

One of the oldest feasts

Theophany is among the most ancient feasts of the Christian year — older, as a fixed feast, than the Nativity of Christ. The earliest datable witness is Clement of Alexandria (c. 200), who reports that the followers of the gnostic Basilides commemorated the baptism of Jesus, keeping a night-vigil, on the night of 6 January (or, by another reckoning, 10 January) (Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.21.146; Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, 2nd ed., Collegeville, 1991, pp. 118–120). In the Christian East, 6 January was originally a unified feast of the Nativity-and-Baptism, celebrating the whole “manifestation” of God in the flesh — his birth and his baptismal epiphany together; only in the later fourth century, as the separate 25 December Nativity spread from the West, did 6 January narrow to the commemoration of the Baptism in most of the East (Talley, Origins, pp. 129–147; and see The Nativity of Christ). This older unity is why the two feasts still mirror each other so closely: both have a forefeast, Royal Hours on the eve, the Liturgy of St Basil, and paired paremias, and the twelve days between them (the “Svyatki”) form a single festal span. The Armenian Church, notably, never adopted the separate 25 December feast and keeps the ancient unified Theophany on 6 January to this day (Talley, Origins, pp. 141–147; and see The Feasts across the Orthodox World).

The Great Blessing of the Waters

The feast’s most distinctive rite is the Great Blessing of the Waters (Greek Megas Hagiasmos), performed twice — at the end of the Liturgy on the eve and again on the feast-day itself, often at a river, lake, or sea, or over a font brought into the church (Bulgakov, Nastolnaya Kniga, 1900, on the rite; The Festal Menaion, pp. 348–387). The long blessing-prayer, attributed to St Sophronios of Jerusalem, invokes the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the waters, that they may become “the fountain of incorruption, the sanctification of souls and bodies,” recalling that Christ has sanctified the Jordan and now sanctifies these waters as well (the prayer of the Great Blessing; The Festal Menaion, pp. 348–387). The blessed water (Bogoyavlenskaya voda, “Theophany water”) is drunk by the faithful, carried to their homes, and used through the year — one of the most beloved sacramentals of Orthodox life. The rite is the feast’s theology enacted: because the incarnate Word entered the waters, all water can be made holy, and through it the whole created order is claimed for God. The eve of Theophany is kept as a strict fast (Bulgakov, Nastolnaya Kniga; and see Fasting and Feasting).

The icon

The icon shows Christ standing in the dark waters of the Jordan, which rise about him like a watery grave or cave — again the visual rhyme with the tomb and the Anastasis. St John the Forerunner reaches from the rocky bank to lay his hand on Christ’s head; angels wait on the far bank with veiled hands, holding cloths to receive him. From the opening of heaven above, a ray descends bearing the dove of the Spirit, and the semicircle of heaven and the ray render the Father’s voice. Small personified figures of the river and the sea are sometimes shown in the water, fleeing or turning back — the Jordan driven back (Psalm 113/114), the powers of the deep subdued (Ouspensky and Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, SVS Press, 1982, on the Theophany icon; and see The Icon of the Feast). The vertical of Father, Spirit-dove, and Son makes the icon a diagram of the Trinity’s self-showing: the one feast that pictures all three divine Persons at once.

See Also

References

  • The Festal Menaion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1969. (The propers of Theophany and the Great Blessing of the Waters, pp. 348–387.)
  • Thomas J. Talley. The Origins of the Liturgical Year. 2nd ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991. (Clement of Alexandria; the ancient unified 6 January feast; the Eastern reception of 25 December.)
  • Clement of Alexandria. Stromateis 1.21.146. Trans. ANF 2.
  • Ouspensky, Leonid, and Vladimir Lossky. The Meaning of Icons. Rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1982.
  • Bulgakov, Sergei V. Nastolnaya Kniga. 2nd ed., 1900.
  • Scripture: Matthew 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22; Psalm 113/114; Romans 6:3–4.