Greetings, readers! Today is the first Sunday after the Epiphany in the West. In the East, it's the patronal feast day celebration of my Orthodox parish, St. Sava Orthodox Church. Here is a lovely icon of St. Sava from my parish, so that you can see what St. Sava looks like. St. Sava's feast day is actually on January 14, the New Year on the Old Calendar, but it was celebrated at St. Sava Orthodox Church today, Sunday, because more people were off work to attend the event. (I think that's why, anyway). It can be really hard for people in today's world to get off of work for weekday festal days, especially after the Christmas season in December.
Here is a link on the life of St. Sava, Enlightener of Serbia:
Today was the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord in the Western liturgical tradition. A few days ago, on January 6, I celebrated that same feast at St. Sava Orthodox Church. We call it Theophany, which is a word that means a visible manifestation of God to humankind. Amazingly, that is the definition given on Google. Who knew that Google could be anything but secular? LOL!
The Troparion for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, sung in Tone 1 of the Slavonic and Greek chant tones, really sums up what it’s all about:
When in Jordan, Thou was baptized, O Lord,
The worship of the Trinity was made manifest.
For the voice of the Father bore witness to Thee,
Naming Thee His beloved Son.
And the Spirit in the form of a dove
Confirmed the certainty of that word.
O Christ our God, Who hast appeared and hast enlightened the world,
Glory be to Thee!
I have shared this link before, but here are a series of choral performances of that Troparion from around the world, in different languages. It’s a link worth sharing again, because the styles of music are so interesting and the church choirs so diverse.
I would like to share some thoughts about the feast days of Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord. The interesting aspect of these feasts is that in the Benedictine tradition, they are all linked as one feast. The feast of the Epiphany, in the Benedictine diurnal, includes not only the visit of the Magi, but also the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan and the wedding of Cana. It’s interesting every year to sing those antiphons from the diurnal, and observe those events in the life of Christ together. This is even more interesting when one considers that January 6 is Christmas Eve on the Julian Calendar.
I have uploaded the icon of the Theophany from St. Sava here.
As our priest at St. Sava, Father Photius, pointed out in his sermon on January 6, this icon has a very curious feature: there are little creatures in the waters of the Jordan that look like water fairies. They are, in fact, the spirits of the water and river gods, widely believed in by ancient people. When Christ entered the Jordan, He cleansed the water of those spirits, freeing the ancient Israelites and Greeks around Him from two things: (1) fear of the water because of their beliefs that capricious spirits inhabited them; and (2) the spiritual bondage of having to make propitiatory offerings to those spirits. I’m not certain how widespread the practice of making offerings to water spirits was among the Jews, but their Canaanite neighbours and the local Greeks and Romans would have been coming to the Jordan all the time to drop coins, wine and other offerings into the water with a plea that the water gods wouldn’t do them any harm. We hear a lot about the Jews in Galilee, but not as much about the pagans who also saw Christ get baptized in the Jordan. The pagans basically did a number of sacrifices throughout the year, in the hopes that their gods wouldn’t take notice of them. If the Roman gods noticed you, you were in trouble because they would make terrible demands of you, or give you a gift for which you had to pay a terrible price! For example, Mars might give you glorious victories on the battlefield, in exchange for your life at a much earlier age than you would have liked to die. The Greek and Roman gods, according to the beliefs about them at the time, never gave anything without exacting something major—and often heart-wrenching--in return. The words from the Godfather movies come to mind: the gods made the Roman an offer that he couldn’t refuse. Hence, most Romans who believed in the gods were terrified of them. The world for the Roman pagans was one of fear, spiritual transaction ("Do this for me, Jupiter, and I'll give you. . .") in a very legalistic mode, or agnostic cynicism. It is interesting to contemplate that Christ, the Word Who created all things, transformed and transfigured the element of water. With Christ’s entry into the Jordan River, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest, and the revelation that those water gods need no longer be a burden or something to be feared. Take a moment and contemplate what that meant for the average Greek who was standing there watching Jesus and John the Baptist! Contemplate further what it meant to that Greek later, when one of the Apostles preached the Gospel to him or her, and revealed the free gift of God’s grace! Free gifts of God with no strings attached, no propitiatory sacrifices required, and the promise of Resurrection instead of the prospect of floating around in a gloomy underworld ruled by Hades! Imagine that.
The next thought I would like to share with you is about the interesting lyrics of the Welsh New Year’s carol that I performed at work today: “A New Year Carol,” arranged for unison choir by Baron Benjamin Britten (knighted and given a life peerage by Queen Elizabeth II in 1976 for his musical services to the English nation). Here is a performance of that same piece, by the Dale Warland Singers.
What I want to talk about is the deep symbolism of the somewhat strange lyrics to this carol. Here are the lyrics:
Here we bring new water from the well so clear,
For to worship God with this happy New Year.
Chorus (after each verse):
Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew, the water and the wine,
The seven bright gold wires and the bugles that do shine.
Sing reign of Fair Maid, with gold upon her toe;
Open you the West Door and turn the Old Year go.
Sing reign of Fair Maid, with gold upon her chin;
Open you the East Door and let the New Year in.
For to worship God with this happy New Year.
Chorus (after each verse):
Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew, the water and the wine,
The seven bright gold wires and the bugles that do shine.
Sing reign of Fair Maid, with gold upon her toe;
Open you the West Door and turn the Old Year go.
Sing reign of Fair Maid, with gold upon her chin;
Open you the East Door and let the New Year in.
This carol from Wales is replete with old British symbolism about the New Year, Christian symbolism dating from anywhere between the 7th to the 14th centuries. The water from the well refers to the practice of blessing the waters in the times of the early English Church, when the priest, on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, would bless not only jugs of water that congregation members brought from home, but also the local streams, wells and rivers. The people were called to a type of baptismal renewal with the annual feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which at that time took place on what would be January 19 today. Back then, everyone was on the Julian Calendar. Some churches in the British Isles went ahead and blessed the waters early, at the New Year. Again, because they were on the Julian calendar, the original New Year in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland was on January 14. Blessing the waters five days before the feast of the Baptism of the Lord would not have been unusual in England and Wales at that time.
There has been a lot of speculation on what “levy dew” originally meant. “Levy” could be from Welsh “llef y Dduw,” meaning “cry to God,” or the Middle English word “levedy” which meant “Lady.” The water and the wine is referencing the wedding at Cana, per Benedictine tradition. Early English Christian spirituality was quintessentially Benedictine, as well as being influenced by the Christian East. The “seven bright gold wires” could refer either to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, or the seven wires of a small harp. For a very long time, Welsh harps were strung with wire instead of catgut, and you had to grow your fingernails long to play the harp because the wire strings would hurt the fingertips. If you owned a harp with gold wires, you were a probably a royal bard. The average harpist couldn’t afford gold strings; gold was the gift of chieftains and royalty. The harp has always been important in Welsh musical culture.
The fair maid referred to in the carol is, of course, the Virgin Mary. The gold at her chin and toe could refer to the gifts of the Magi. We’re not sure what that’s about. What is interesting to note, however, is that in the present day, January 1 is the Feast of the Mother of God in the Roman Catholic Church. During the earlier times I mentioned, in early medieval Britain, January 1 would have been the feast day of the Circumcision of the Lord Jesus. The Virgin Mary is present in that Biblical account also, going with Joseph to the Temple for the naming and circumcision of the Infant Christ.
The most interesting lyric in this carol refers to letting in the new year in the East, and releasing the old year in the West. This comes from the old folk belief, common in that area of northern Europe, that the East and West symbolized spiritual reality. East symbolized new horizons because of sunrise. The West, conversely, symbolized letting go of things because of sunset. The movements of the sun and the moon and other natural phenomena held spiritual significance for the Celts and the Saxons alike. These folk ideas were not alien to Christianity, since the Church had a custom of always having the doors of churches face East. This was because the East represented the Nativity star and the Resurrection. The Church acknowledged cultural traditions that made sense Biblically and didn’t conflict with Christian doctrine. The Church is often accused of suppressing indigenous cultural traditions. This accusation is not entirely accurate across the board, depending on time period, whether we're talking about the East or West, and the culture in question. In most cases, there was and still is a lot of cultural syncretism in the Church. The most striking examples of that can be found in Greece, Alaska, central America, and the Caribbean islands.
That’s all I have for you today, folks. I hope you have enjoyed these little reflections. I leave you with a New Year’s carol from Orkney. Happy New Year, everyone!
