Arkady Mahler
On January 19, according to the Gregorian calendar, the Orthodox world celebrates the great feast of the Theophany, which is also called the Baptism of the Lord. For a modern person this feast often seems secondary and remains shadowed by the recently passed feast of the Nativity of Christ. However, for the Ancient Church of the first three centuries the main winter feast was precisely the Theophany, which included the very idea of Nativity. The feast of Nativity in the Greek East began to the celebrated separately from Theophany only at the end of the 4th century. The great Father of the Church, who lived at that time, St Gregory the Theologian, wrote: “The past feast [of Nativity] was bright, but the coming one [the feast of Theophany] is brighter. The former was foretold by an angel, and the latter was prepared by a Forerunner“. Indeed, Theophany was even called the “day of lights.” What is the exceptional “light-bearing” of the feast?
In the feast the Church celebrates two events at once – the baptism of Jesus Christ by John the Forerunner in the waters of the Jordan River and the appearance of the entire Divine Trinity, that is the Theophany. From this moment Christ’s outreach to the people begins: He was 30 years old, and He came to John the Forerunner, who preached and baptized at the Jordan River in Bethabara (John 1:28). It is this story that is captured in the famous painting by Alexander Ivanov “The Appearance of Christ to the People”, exhibited in the Tretyakov Gallery. On the canvas John the Forerunner stretches out his hands to Jesus and says: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a Man which is preferred before me: for He was before me” (John 1:29-30). On this occasion an inquisitive mind asks inevitable questions: how could John the Forerunner know that it was Jesus Who was the promised Messiah (Christ)? How could the God-man Jesus be baptized by the man John when John himself would have to be baptized by Jesus? Finally, what was “крещение” before the rise of Christianity itself? All these questions are extremely important for understanding the meaning of this great feast.
The very word “крещение”, of course, makes sense only in Christianity and could only arise after Christ was crucified on the Cross, which was considered to be the most terrible and shameful execution for any inhabitant of the Roman Empire. No one knew about any Cross before the Crucifixion, therefore, the word “крещение”, of course, did not exist, but there was another word – the Greek “baptise”, meaning immersion in water. If the Jews underwent circumcision on the eighth day after birth to make a Covenant with God, then when a pagan accepted the Old Testament religion of the ancient Jews, they underwent a ritual of immersion in water, symbolizing their cleansing from their former sinful life. It must be said that what is called “крещение” in Russian is still called “immersion” in other languages.
John the Forerunner, who was also called the Baptist after this event, asked Jesus at first: “I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (Matt.3:14-15). Then what kind of “righteousness” (Greek δικαιοσύνην – “justice”) are we talking about? Of course, Jesus, as God, did not need any ritual immersion, therefore, John’s question was absolutely logical. Let us remember that on the eighth day after His birth Jesus was circumcised, like all Jewish boys, and this event is also celebrated by the Church as the day of the Circumcision of the Lord on January 14, according to the Gregorian calendar. Therefore, Jesus underwent both the rite of circumcision and the rite of immersion. The key to understanding these two seemingly strange events is found in the well-known words of Christ: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matt.5:17). Having passed the rite of circumcision, Jesus Christ becomes a member of the Jewish people, fulfilling the prophecies about the birth of the Messiah among the people of Israel, but with His saving feat and the establishment of the Church this rite loses its former meaning, because the revelation of the New Testament is addressed to all people of the world and not only to Jews. After that, the ritual of circumcision, symbolizing the Old Testament, is replaced by the sacrament of immersion (baptism), symbolizing the New Testament. During the circumcision the boys acquired their names, the same thing was with the God-child Christ, it was during circumcision that He received the name Jesus commanded through archangel Gabriel. In the same way in baptism a person receives their church name. But in order to replace the circumcision with the sacrament of baptism the action of God was necessary. Participating in the ritual immersion conducted by John the Forerunner, Jesus Christ sanctified it with His divine grace and founded it as a new sacrament. Thus, John the Forerunner acted here as the external baptizer (“immerser”), and Christ acted as the real one.
When Jesus went up out of the waters of the Jordan, “the heavens were opened unto him, and he [John] saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased” (Matt.3:16-17).
In the event all the main meanings of this great feast are revealed to us.
First, the whole Divine Trinity is revealed here: the Father is like a voice from heaven, the Son is like the God-man Jesus, the Spirit is like a dove descending on Jesus. That is why the feast is called Theophany: God is revealed in all his Three Persons. Therefore, a tradition arose to depict the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.
Secondly, all the Persons of the Divine Trinity participate in the ritual of baptism (immersion), therefore, the minimum condition for baptism is its consecration in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as Christ commanded – “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt.28:19).
Thirdly, only after the words of the Father “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased” John the Forerunner was able to fully recognize in Jesus the Messiah whom he preached. John the Forerunner openly admits: “And I knew Him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon Whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Spirit. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God” (John 1:33-34).
Therefore, Theophany is one of the most ancient Christian feasts, which was recognized even before the Nativity of Christ. Theophany completes the Nativity cycle, and a special ascetic preparation is required for it – just as on the eve of Nativity there is a strict fast (Nativity Eve), the same fast must be observed on the eve of Theophany (Theophany Eve). Among different Christian people there is a popular tradition to swim in the reservoirs on the night of Theophany, which is not at all reprehensible, as long as the meaning of this tradition is understood in a Christian way, and not in a pagan way.
In no case can it be assumed that all the water on the whole Earth becomes “holy” on the night of Theophany, therefore, there is no “consecration” or “baptism” in any body of water, unless its water was previously sanctified by an Orthodox priest. Just as the sacrament of baptism can only be performed by a priest, people cannot baptize themselves. In general, no action can be considered a Sacrament of the Church if the Church, represented by a member of its hierarchy, does not participate in it and does not testify that it is precisely the Sacrament of the Church, and not something else.
Otherwise, the tradition of bathing on Theophany in rivers and ice holes is nothing more than fun, vaguely reminiscent of this Sacrament. The Old Testament is also full of different stories involving water, from the creation of the world (Genesis 1:1-13) and the passage of the Jews through the Red Sea (Ex. 14:15-18) to the healing of the waters of Jericho by Elisha (2 Kings 2:19-22), which are a prototype of the future Baptism, in addition to their other meanings. And today, when many people happily go to swim in the earth’s waters on the night of January 19, they only follow the Christian tradition as long as they remember the New Testament symbolic meaning of the custom, without naming it, on the one hand, baptism and consecration, and on the other hand, without giving it any pagan character, otherwise this custom is completely meaningless, since even in the Old Testament the ritual of immersion meant precisely the rejection of pagan darkness and the acquisition of new life in the True God.
The article is translated from Russian with the author’s permission