The Shepherd, January 2005
THE COMING MONTH
JANUARY opens in the middle of the festal period which links Christmas and the Theophany. The feast of the Nativity, in the Orthodox practice, ends on 31st December, and we then have the one-day feast of the Circumcision of the Lord, before entering the four-day pre-festival period which precedes the Great Feast of the Theophany on 6th / 19th. All this period, except the day before Theophany itself is kept as a fast-free period, honouring the two Great Feasts which it spans.
On the feast of the Circumcision, because it is also St Basil’s day, and on the eve of Theophany, we celebrate the Liturgy of St Basil the Great rather than the more usual St John Chrysostom. Outwardly these two Liturgies are very much the same, but from the litany of the catechumens onwards the secret prayers read by the priest are different, and during the consecration they are much longer, and so the chants used for the hymns at this point are correspondingly longer.
The order of the services on the eve of Theophany is like that on Christmas Eve, with the reading of the Royal Hours, and then Vespers leading into the Liturgy. The greatest difference is that at the end of the Liturgy, on this day we have the Greater Blessing of Waters in church. [At Brookwood, because we are keeping the morning services of the eve at the Convent, we will have our water blessing during the Vigil in th evening]. The rite of the Blessing of Waters is repeated on the day of the feast itself, after the Divine Liturgy, but it is then, properly though not always, done at the seashore, at a pond, river or stream outside.
For the Blessing done in church, the faithful should bring clean bottles whose tops can be secured and which they use exclusively for this purpose, so that they can take the blessed waters for use in their homes throughout the year. The water should be kept in one’s holy corner, and it may be used to sprinkle the house as a blessing, particularly after any unpleasantness there, or a sip may be taken as a blessing but this should be done when one is fasting. Some people take a sip every day when they are not going to receive the greater blessing of Holy Communion; others only when they fall ill or are spiritually low.
Such is the fundamental significance of our Lord’s Baptism, and of our own, that not only on the feastday but on the Saturdays and Sundays before and after the feast special Apostle and Gospel readings are appointed which tell of the mystery. The feast of Theophany itself is kept for nine days, its leavetaking falling on 14th / 27th January.
Usually in January, we begin the period of the Lenten Triodion, the period when we begin to make our ten week preparation for Easter, but this year Easter falls very late (on Sunday 18th April / 1st May) and so we do not start the Triodion until well into February.
January is resplendent with the festivals of many of the greatest saints, particularly many of the greatest monastic ones. After His Baptism our Saviour went out into the desert and fasted and prayed for forty days, and the Church now honours those saints who followed their Saviour in their desert-dwelling and in their life of prayer and fasting. They in turn give us the faithful encouragement at a time when, whether we have reached the Triodion or not, our thoughts are turning towards the struggle of the Great Lent ahead of us
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