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

The Feast of Ss. Peter & Paul (June 29th)

The divinely-blessed Peter was from Bethsaida of Galilee. He was the son of Jonas and the brother of Andrew the First-called. He was a fisherman by trade, unlearned and poor, and was called Simon; later he was renamed Peter by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Who looked at him and said, "Thou art Simon the son of Jonas; thou shalt be called Cephas (which is by interpretation, Peter)" (John 1:42). On being raised by the Lord to the dignity of an Apostle and becoming inseparable from Him as His zealous disciple, he followed Him from the beginning of His preaching of salvation up until the very Passion, when, in the court of Caiaphas the high priest, he denied Him thrice because of his fear of the Jews and of the danger at hand. But again, after many bitter tears, he received complete forgiveness of his transgression. After the Resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit, he preached in Judea, Antioch, and certain parts of Asia, and finally came to Rome, where he was crucified upside down by Nero, and thus he ascended to the eternal habitations about the year 66 or 68, leaving two Catholic (General) Epistles to the Church of Christ.

Paul, the chosen vessel of Christ, the glory of the Church, the Apostle of the Nations and teacher of the whole world, was a Jew by race, of the tribe of Benjamin, having Tarsus as his homeland. He was a Roman citizen, fluent in the Greek language, an expert in knowledge of the Law, a Pharisee, born of a Pharisee, and a disciple of Gamaliel, a Pharisee and notable teacher of the Law in Jerusalem. For this cause, from the beginning, Paul was a most fervent zealot for the traditions of the Jews and a great persecutor of the Church of Christ; at that time, his name was Saul (Acts 22:3-4). In his great passion of rage and fury against the disciples of the Lord, he went to Damascus bearing letters of introduction from the high priest. His intention was to bring the disciples of Christ back to Jerusalem in bonds. As he was approaching Damascus, about midday there suddenly shone upon him a light from Heaven. Falling on the earth, he heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" And he asked, "Who art Thou, Lord?" And the Lord said, "I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." And that heavenly voice and brilliance made him tremble, and he was blinded for a time.

He was led by the hand into the city, and on account of a divine revelation to the Apostle Ananias (see Oct. 1), he was baptized by him, and both his bodily and spiritual eyes were opened to the knowledge of the Sun of Righteousness. And straightway- O wondrous transformation! - beyond all expectation, he spoke with boldness in the synagogues, proclaiming that "Christ is the

As he was approaching Damascus, about midday there suddenly shone upon him a light from Heaven. Falling on the earth Son of God" (Acts 9:1-21). As for his zeal in preaching the Gospel after these things had come to pass, as for his unabating labors and afflictions of diverse kinds, the wounds, the prisons, the bonds, the beatings, the stonings, the shipwrecks, the journeys, the perils on land, on sea, in cities, in wildernesses, the continual vigils, the daily fasting, the hunger, the thirst, the nakedness, and all those other things that he endured for the Name of Christ, and which he underwent before nations and kings and the Israelites, and above all, his care for all the churches, his fiery longing for the salvation of all, whereby he became all things to all men, that he might save them all if possible, and because of which, with his heart aflame, he continuously traveled throughout all parts, visiting them all, and like a bird of heaven flying from Asia and Europe, the West and East, neither staying nor abiding in any one place - all these things are related incident by incident in the Book of the Acts, and as he himself tells them in his Epistles. His Epistles, being fourteen in number, are explained in 250 homilies by the divine Chrysostom and make manifest the loftiness of his thoughts, the abundance of the revelations made to him, the wisdom given to him from God, wherewith he brings together in wondrous manner the Old with the NewTestaments, and expounds the mysteries thereof which had been concealed under types; he confirms the doctrines of the Faith, expounds the ethical teaching of the Gospel, and demonstrates with exactness the duties incumbent upon every rank, age, and order of man. In all these things his teaching proved to be a spiritual trumpet, and his speech was seen to be more radiant than the sun, and by these means he clearly sounded forth the word of truth and illumined the ends of the world. Having completed the work of his ministry, he likewise ended his life in martyrdom when he was beheaded in Rome during the reign of Nero, at the same time, some say, when Peter was crucified.

Source: © Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. 
Reading © Holy Transfiguration Monastery -Brookline, MA