Friends,
Congratulations on the feast of the Lord’s Baptism!
In fact, this feast is MUCH MORE than the Lord’s Baptism – it is in fact the feast of “God Appears”, that is, Theophany, Epiphany, Богоявление. All those words mean the same thing: God Appears. And this is because it is not just Jesus Christ being baptized in the Jordan by St. John the Baptist, but rather, the Holy Spirit also descends in the form of a dove, and the voice of the Father is heard. That is, our God, the Holy Trinity, appears to mankind. We do not worship some far away and unknown deity – we worship the True God – the Holy Trinity – One God in Three Hypostases (Persons). The God who is Love, in the words of St. John the Theologian.
Nice. Interesting. Perhaps even inspiring. But what does that mean to us? That is, are we talking about abstract information here, or is there a call to action?
Of course there is a call to action! :) Jesus Christ said “I came not to be served, but to serve.” And if we bear His name, as Christians (which we do in case you are not sure about that), then we must serve too! Sometimes that means we feed the hungry, or clothe the naked, or visit those in prison, etc. That is, we act on a person directly in our service. Sometimes that means we act in community. And the feast of the Theophany gives us a GREAT opportunity to act as a parish family every year!
How so? As we sanctify the waters of our parish and our Michigan! The full schedule of those water blessings can be found here, and we encourage everyone to participate:
SCHEDULE OF GREAT BLESSING OF WATER
BUT – that “we encourage everyone to participate” means, to most people, that SOMEONE ELSE will be doing this participating. Not me. That is for someone else.
And I get it – everyone is busy. But let’s return to the concept above for a moment: if I am a Christian, if I bear the name of Christ, then I need to serve.
And we have an important opportunity for you to serve our neighbors coming up this Sunday. EVERYONE (not someone else – you) should participate. I repeat: everyone.
At 2:00 p.m. we will bless the waters at Mill Creek in Dexter. We need you there. The idea of the Mill Creek water blessing is to provide a HUGE turnout of our parishioners and make a very positive impact on the people of Dexter. We'll have crosses, banners, singing, etc. If we do this right we will gain new parishioners and friends. If we have 3.5 people there it will be an embarrassment. So I think we need to focus on this since this is the sort of thing we will answer the Lord for.
We’ll gather at 1:55 p.m. (American time – please do not be late) for a procession from the parking lot to the place of the blessing. The village authorities are aware of this and support our efforts.
Dress warmly. The forecast is not terribly cold, but as we stand and pray and sing for 30 minutes or so you’ll want to be dressed appropriately. A little suffering for the sake of Christ is fine – even good – but we are not doing this to torture ourselves. Rather, we are doing this to bring Christ to the people – the people that do not yet know Him. To show our neighbors that God has appeared to mankind, and to invite them to know Him by joining our parish family.
May the Lord richly reward our efforts in this regard!
Asking Your Prayers,
Fr. Gregory
MAP - PARKING FOR MILL CREEK WATER BLESSING:
