Tarek El Mahaba | Page 42

THE GLORIOUS FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3: 16-17). The feast of Epiphany or the Baptism is on Tobah 11, which is January 19. It is the feast of Baptism of Christ. The Feast of the Epiphany is one of the Seven Major Feasts of our Lord. the tradition is to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity up until the Feast of the Epiphany. On this day, we celebrate what the Lord Christ does for humanity. The Holy Trinity appeared to Mankind in an obvious way. This feast is also called the feast of the divine manifestation. In the Epiphany, the Lord offered us what is His own. By baptism we became children of God in Christ while we are human being. During the liturgy, abounas bless water and bless the people by the water on their foreheads and hands to commemorate baptism. Baptism is the first sacrament of the Church, and is the door through which we enter to the other sacraments. The earth could not be healed of such a great and invisible plaque by any medications of her own, but by the heavenly Divine nature of the gift of the Holy Spirit. About Epiphany The holy fathers told us that the Lord Jesus has borne our sins upon the Cross, and erased them with His blood as He has borne the sins of the world, and descended 42 with them to the baptism. Although the Lord Christ without sin, He completed the sacrament of the baptism of repentance. He baptized to bear the sins of all of us. He waited till He reached the age of thirty. We see the manifestation of the Holy Trinity at the baptism of the Lord Christ: God the Father speaks from heaven, God the Son (Jesus) is being baptized by John, and God the Spirit (the Holy Spirit) appears in the form of a dove. The Feast of the Epiphany not only marks the day of the Lord Jesus Christ's baptism, it marks the beginning of salvation for us all. May the Lord Almighty grant us all a blessed and Holy Feast of the Epiphany.