The Nativity and Epiphany

Everyone felt to some extent that life is not only about birth, trials and the inevitable end. Everyone wants to find true meaning, truth, true love – something that our earthly world, in all its beauty and abundance, cannot grant us to the full extent.

This desire is not accidental, it is driven by the memory of our heart about our true purpose. Man was created for eternal life and live communication with God - the Source of life and love. It is only in Him where man finds pure happiness and fullness of life.

However, possessing free will - a gift given by God - man sinned, chose the path of separation from the Creator, thus breaking the original bond with Him. As a result of this breakup, human nature has been distorted: suffering, evil and death are at work in the world. We have lost the original purity and the possibility of direct communication with the Creator.

God, by His boundless love and mercy, did not leave His creation in this state of alienation. For centuries He has spoken to people through prophets, promising the coming Savior - the Messiah, Who must overcome the consequences of the breakup, restore lost unity and bring back the possibility of reconciliation between man and God.

And when the time came, God fulfilled His promise in a surprising and incomprehensible way.

At the Nativity of Christ, the eternal Creator of the universe, not ceasing to be God, received our human nature. He entered history not as a formidable Judge, but as a humble Child to heal humanity from within.

The Nativity of Christ is a turning point in the history of the relationship between God and man. Not just a prophet or a wise teacher was born in Bethlehem. In the Child Jesus, the Divine and human nature are united, forming an inseparable unity, where each of the nature fully preserves its properties.

Why was it necessary? God in Christ has taken upon Himself all human nature - with its sorrows and wounds caused by sin, including death - with the purpose to restore and transform human nature. It is an act of Divine love and mercy, where God does not remain in the distance, but enters into human reality to transform it.

Since the Nativity of Christ, human nature, being affected by sin (as a consequence of Adam and Eve´s first sin), received the possibility to be healed. In Christ a New Adam is revealed to us - a perfect man, in whom the original likeness of God has been restored. Through Him each of us is given the opportunity to become again a «son of God» - what man was originally intended to be: a creation called to eternal life in love and communion with the Creator.

Christ goes all the way through human life, sanctifying it by Himself. He begins His public service with an event that seems paradoxical at first sight - the baptism in the waters of the Jordan river.

Thirty years after His Nativity, Christ comes to the shore of the Jordan. Here the prophet John the Baptist calls the people to leave sin behind and start a new life. Many people enter the water, seeking to purify the heart through this ablution.

The answer reveals all the depth of God’s love. Christ does this not for Himself, but for us.

• God stands with us. He stands beside the sinners, not raising Himself above them but to share our life and its burden. It is an act of humility in which God enters into human reality, becoming one of us except sin, and taking upon Himself the consequences of sin, even though He is sinless.
• «Fulfills all righteousness » (Matt. 3:15). Christ fully fulfills God’s plan for man, showing an example of humility and obedience. In this way He restores order of the relationship between God and man - the order of humility, obedience, and love which was broken by human sin.
• Sanctifies the very nature of water. Diving into the waters of the Jordan, He sanctifies the water element, and through it all terrestrial matter.

At the time of the Baptism of Our Lord on the river Jordan, there was something more than the consecration of water. The Holy Trinity was revealed to the world for the first time: the voice of the Father is heard: «And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”» (Matt. 3:17), and the Holy Spirit descends on Christ in the form of a dove. This phenomenon reveals the deepest mystery of the Orthodox faith: God is one in essence, but three in persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Not three Gods, but one God Who is the source of being and the Creator of the whole world. Each person has all the fullness of the Godhead, while remaining different from the other two by its hypostasis (it has Its own unique hypostasis - not merging or blending into each other).

This mystery cannot be rationally comprehended and is gradually revealed to man as he grows spiritually, when the heart learns to live in the light of Divine love. And it is in the Epiphany that the main thing is revealed to us: God is eternal and perfect Love, living in unity and communion of three persons - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

It is exactly for this communication - participation in the Divine love - that God created a man. Sin destroyed this bond, but Christ came to restore it by uniting a man with the Creator.

The consecration of Epiphany water is a direct continuation of the Theophany. This is invocation of the Holy Spirit, Who has descended upon the waters of the Jordan. By the prayer of the Church, the ordinary water element becomes the conduit of Divine grace.

It is a visible sign that God embraces all sides of our life: our bodies, homes, work, land. We drink holy water, sprinkle our homes, and feel that everything that seemed ordinary can become a place where God is present. One can testify that “God is here in my life”, when drinking holy water.

By acceptance this gift, a heart which is opened to God becomes a new Jordan where miraculous reunion of man and the Creator takes place.

In the feast of the Epiphany (Theophany) we witness that:

• God reveals Himself to man as the Holy Trinity.
• He sanctifies the material world (water), showing that grace embraces not only our soul but also our body and all creation.

The Nativity and the Epiphany are the beginning of a new existence in which God was forever united with human nature, sanctified matter and revealed Himself as the Trinity - the source of eternal Love.

But how can we, living two thousand years later, connect to this reality? How can the healed human nature of Christ become ours?

With that purpose God has given us not only the evangelical teaching, but also the Church - a living space of His presence.

At the Nativity God receives human nature, and in the Church, as in the Body of Christ, He receives all of us, uniting believers in Himself.

It is in the Church that what began in Bethlehem and on the Jordan becomes available to each of us personally through the sacraments:

• Baptism is our personal birth for a new life given by Christ. Just as He entered the waters of the Jordan to sanctify them, so we enter into the baptismal font to be sanctified and become part of His Body and «sons of God» by grace.
• Confession is our constant return to the purity bestowed upon us in baptism. It is a reconciliation with God, the restoration of that communication which we interrupt by our sin.
• Eucharist (Communion) - in this sacrament we become part of the very Divine life for which the Word became flesh.

Here we are joined with Christ Himself, as He said: “For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” (John 6:55-57)

The Church is the way in which God gives back to man his true dignity, lost in paradise. Through the Church, God returns the light to the world, and to man - his highest calling: eternal life in communion with the Creator.

Incarnation of God is the greatest act of love in which God goes forth toward His creation. Having become one of us, Christ has walked the whole human pathto the end.

This path begins with a small but sincere heart´s desire, ready to answer His call:

• Read the Gospel
• Turn to God in prayer and come to a church
• Strive for moral purity.

When Christ comes into one’s life, it is transformed: fear is replaced by peace, indifference by love and darkness by light.

And then the miracle of Christ’s birth takes place in our heart: we, like the human nature of Christ, begin to transform - to shine with the light of grace, peace and love that brought into the world the born Child.