The Sunday after Theophany

Review: Ontology of Beauty.  Designed to provide a deeper appreciation for our faith and to demonstrate the blindness of materialism (to include the “new atheists”).  When materialists describe our appreciation for beauty, they either try to show how an appreciation for beauty somehow increased evolutionary fitness, or, in a more sophisticated way, say that it is a happy coincidence.  We know that there is more to beauty than these explanations allow.  God is beautiful, and His infinite beauty continually flows into creation as naturally as do logic, life, and love.  Beauty draws us into a growing relationship with something Good beyond ourselves, while at the same time resonating with and nourishing the spark of beauty within; it is not only real, but it is perfecting.  It’s ontology is sacramental.

Today we are continuing the feast of Theophany; the celebration of God’s revelation to us of His Triune (Three in One; One in Three) nature at Christ’s Baptism.  God the Father (the First Person of the Trinity) is revealed through His voice, which acknowledges Jesus as His Son (the Second Person of the Trinity), while the Holy Spirit (the Third Person of the Trinity) descends on Him and confirms this great truth.  This is an important thing for us to know, and we thank God for this revelation.  Among other things, the prayerful contemplation of the Trinity tells us much about how we, though separate persons, can and should be united; that the Church is more than a collection of like-minded individuals, and that the thing that they share is the thing that best defines them.  It describes how we can, as the Liturgy says, have “one mind” yet maintain our own identities, thoughts, and charismas. 

Theophany as an Introduction to Holiness. But it is not this mysterious truth that the Church, through the hymns and scripture of the feast, would have us focus on.  No, the poetry and prophecy of the feast of Theophany is on the reaction of creation to the presence of the Messiah, the Christ, the God-man Jesus; and in so doing it brings up another reality that – along with the reality of beauty that we discussed last week – “confounds the Greeks” (i.e. the new atheists and all materialists).  This reality is the ontology of holiness and its effect on creation.  

Holiness I: a source and reflection of spiritual light, warmth, and power. It is a quality that blessed things have; things that have been sanctified through their dedication to and proximity to the absolute source of spiritual light, warmth, and power.  This source exists outside of creation, but creation is designed to thrive under its influence; and having thrived, to become holy itself.  You get a sense of holiness when you perceive that something is “good”; and by good, I do not mean useful or pleasing.  These are the selfish perversions of “goodness”.  I mean when you can just tell that something is wholesome and right; when it just seems to radiate spiritual light, warmth, and power.

Holiness II: Eden as the Cultivation of Holiness.  As the race created in the “Image of God”, humans had a special blessing to be cultivators of a holy creation.  The rest of creation, in turn, was created to respond to us.  But when we forsake holiness in favor of profanity, our special relationship with creation changed; we became as much of a curse to creation as anything else.   We, along with everything else, were created “good”, but we have forsaken this goodness and the result is a world that yields weeds and thistles along with fruits and vegetables.

Holiness III:  But God desires the restoration of creation with us as its cultivator.  Old Adam – that is to say, old humanity – forsook holiness and lost its special relationship with the rest of creation.  Adam fell, and scripture tells us that creation groaned in agony as a result.  But here scripture is simply affirming something we already know: we are at odds with the world – some would say we are at war with it, and our attempts to subdue it through sheer force and technology have been met with, as God describes “thorns and thistles”.  The response of the best environmentalists can only mitigate the affects of this sundered relationship; and the desires of the purist secular and pagan ecologists, while well intended, cannot be realized through good will alone.  It seems that we are destined to wrestle with the world until either it or us are destroyed.

But into this mess comes new hope: the New Adam; the one who never forsook holiness; the one who is, in fact, the pre-eternal source of holiness who chose to join the race of fallen Adam so that through Him it might be restored.   Spiritual warmth, light, and power radiated from His flesh.  He was holy and creation responded to Him.  The waters of the Jordan were transformed by His contact with it; water became the source, the mechanism, of the perfection of humankind.  All the wickedness that had come to dwell within the Jordan were “turned back” due to the presence of the messiah, the God-man Jesus.  Wickedness cannot abide the presence of holiness.  It is forced to either fight it or flee.  And this influence of Christ on creation did not stop at the Jordan.  The world could not be still at His presence: the good responded to Him as it was intended; the wicked either repented and joined Him in holiness or doubled down in its profanity. 

Conclusion: the mission of the Church.  The marvelous thing is that through Him all of creation is being renewed.  His ministry on earth was just the start, the seed.  When it was planted in the earth at His death, it immediately sprang out of the earth with greater power and purpose.  Through Him, by embracing His holiness – now risen as the Holy Orthodox Church with Him as its root and head -  we can bring holiness to the world.  In the saints, this took very tangible form; but I know that you have seen it operate in your own life.  You respond to holiness and you have seen others do the same.  Some recoil in shock and revulsion; others reflect it back so that the mutual glow is increased.

Am I being too abstract?  Try this.  The materialists say there is no proof of what I am saying: let’s show how wrong they are.  Repay profanity with holiness.  When someone is being mean and spiteful, meet it with patience and kindness.  See what the reaction is.  If you are pure in your intent, there will be one of two reactions: either the spite will dissipate or it will attack.  In either case, do not stop the experiment: watch how your friends and enemies alike respond to the holiness you bring into their lives.  Watch how its presence in others affects you.

Not only will this confound the new atheists in our midst, it will bring joy back into this troubled world.  And that is the real point of the Theophany of Our Lord.