Dragons in the Waters

The water imagery in the liturgical poetry of Theophany is some of the most powerful in Orthodox literature. The hymns and prayers of the services elaborate on scripture after scripture about water, until the very pages of the text seem drenched. The children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, the prophet Isaiah offering cleansing, baptismal teaching in the Epistle to the Romans, psalms urging the waters to join all Creation in praise of God, dew falling on Gideon’s fleece, Jonah and the big fish, and of course the Gospel accounts of our Lord’s baptism proper to the feast.

 But first of all these watery motifs, in the opening hymn of Vespers of the Forefeast, comes an allusion to Psalm 73:13 (LXX): ‘Make ready, O River Jordan: for behold, Christ our God draws near to be baptized by John, that He may crush with His divinity the invisible heads of the dragons in the waters’. 

 When we remember that Theophany was once the chief baptismal feast of the Church, it comes as no surprise to meet with verses like these, from the first canon of Orthros: ‘Let us, the faithful, keep ourselves safe through grace and the seal of baptism...this divine washing unto regeneration shall be our Exodus’.

 The water of baptism changes us. We are so familiar with this concept, we take it for granted. We know it is about washing away our sins. Theologians have long ago pointed out that Christ Himself, sinless and divine, had no need to undergo this cleansing rite that John the Baptist offered prophetically to those who were penitent. Our Lord entered the waters of the Jordan in humility, sharing our human nature but not our  fallenness. Yet the icon of the Feast, and the hymns about the ‘dragons in the waters’, establish at once that this Feast is less about Christ’s humility than about His divine power. Naturalistic Western art may show the Lord humbly kneeling beneath the outstretched hands of John, the water falling through the Forerunner’s fingers unto the Savior’s head; but an Orthodox icon of the Theophany offers us instead the strange and powerful image of our Lord standing, apparently on the waters as He did in the Gospel account of His walking on the Sea of Galilee (Mk 6:48).

 Different icons of the Theophany may show a number of allegorical figures which demonstrate Christ’s divine power over the waters of the natural world and their spiritual counterparts—sometimes a female one signifying the sea, or a male one representing the Jordan, both referring to God’s Old Testament power over the waters, when He caused them to flee before His people (Ps 114:3-5). From Christ too these iconic figures recoil in dread. A fish sometimes stands for the sea monsters, or, more graphically, the heads of serpents are shown being crushed beneath Jesus’ feet. 

There it is. The water of baptism changes us—but in His baptism, it is Jesus who changes the spiritual nature of water itself, forever. ‘Now the nature of the waters is blessed by Thy baptism in the flesh’ (Compline Canon 9, Forefeast of Theophany).

 Christ purges the waters of their monstrous infestation, Hear these thrilling words placed in our Lord’s mouth in the Sixth Hour of the Eve of Theophany: ‘I am in haste to slay the enemy hidden in the waters, the prince of darkness, that I may now deliver the world from his snares’.

 The annual service of the Great Blessing of the Waters at Theophany celebrates this change in the nature of water and trumph over evil worked by the manifestation of Christ’s divine power: ‘He who alone is clean and undefiled was cleansed in the Jordan that we might be made clean, sanctifying us and the waters, and crushing the heads of the dragons in the waters’.

 Water without Christ remains a symbol of hidden evil. In the film The Beach, a group of people form a utopian community on a hidden South Sea island. The settlement beside the dazzling waters of the tranquil lagoon seems to be paradise itself, until one of the men is attacked by a shark. But there is no grace or transformation in the irreligious, self-centered, pleasure-seeking community, and the hidden monsters of the human spirit soon churn their way to the surface.

 The members of the group will not take their wounded comrade to a mainland hospital, lest their secret paradise be exposed, and so, lacking the means to heal him, they finally carry him some distance away from their little settlement so that his cries of agony will not disturb their languid days of swimming, sunning, and playing. The long swim that leads the film’s main characters to the island is only a pseudo- baptism, an initiation into a life of surface beauty and pleasure whose depths are infested with monsters.

 This is why we bless water, a nd use it to bless other things—our homes, our selves, icons, candles, the harvest, livestock, even cars. It is a powerful proclamation of the sovereignty of Christ over the evil powers that lurk beneath the surface of the world around us.

 At this time of year it is customary not only to bring home little bottles of holy water, but also to invite our parish priest to bless our homes with the sprinkling of water and singing of the Theophany Troparion. As we face the year ahead in this world of hidden dragons, let us not neglect these healthful and sanctifying customs of blessing our lives with the waters of Theophany.

 -Excerpted and edited from Seasons of Grace: Reflections of the Orthodox Church Year, by Donna Farley