LIMA — It truly was a sacrifice of praise for members of St. Stephen the First Martyr Orthodox Church Friday as they braved the cold temperatures and winds atop Bresler Reservoir for the church’s annual Great Sanctification of Waters ceremony.
The ceremony is always held on the Feast of the Epiphany, in which Orthodox Christians celebrate the baptism of Jesus. This celebration actually predates Christmas celebrations, according to Father Mark Hodges.
“When (Roman emperor) Constantine turned to the Lord (in A.D. 313), he converted a whole empire, basically,” he said. “They decided to make the day of the sun, which was Dec. 25, when they worshipped the sun, with the sun coming back, being the shortest day of the year, the day they celebrated the birth of Christ.”
The ceremonial blessing of the water, in which Hodges dipped a cross into the reservoir, is a symbolic reference to the biblical account of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove after his baptism.
“We ask the Holy Spirit himself to enter the water,” Hodges said. “And since God has become incarnate, the creator becoming a creature, the immaterial becoming material for our sake, the Holy Spirit vivifies the water, which blesses everything it touches and heals everyone who receives it.”
For Hodges, Epiphany is an example of the working of the Trinity, the Christian belief in a single god manifested in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, with the Son being baptized, the Spirit descending and the Father speaking about being pleased in Jesus.
“This is a revelation of God as a relationship of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” he said. “Love is the foundation of the world, and that is what we celebrate at Epiphany. People say the world is full of evil, but the foundation of the world is not evil. We have messed it up. The foundation of the world is love.”
Along with the blessing of the water, homes following the Orthodox tradition are also blessed on Epiphany with a ceremony involving family prayers and the sprinkling of holy water on all four corners of each room.
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