The Epiphany complete, the Twelve days of the Christmas holidays and carry the message of hope, through the manifestation of the three persons of the Holy Trinity.
The Epiphany is celebrated on 6 January and is the third and last feast of the Festive. The name arises from the manifestation of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, which happened in accordance with three related gospel cuts. The feast of the Epiphany is also called Surface and Lights (or Festival of Lights).
Why dip it in the water for the cross
Together with the manifestation of the Holy Trinity, is celebrated and a sleeping cult to the water, which are considered to be everywhere sanctified. Mainly young people diving in the waters, in defiance of the cold,because they consider it a great blessing to get the cross, while, in many areas of our country, the priest releases a dove in memory of the appearance of the Holy Spirit “in the form” (the form of) a dove, and then visiting the houses to sanctify.
The memory of the baptism of Jesus
In the gospel cuts at the beginning of the 30th year of the age of Jesus, John (the Baptist) son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the selected then a Baptist, who was 6 months older of Christ, and he lived in the desert, ασκητεÏοντας and preaching the baptism of repentance, baptized with surprise and Jesus in the Jordan river. At the time of Christening came down from heaven the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove in Jesus and at the same time the sky sounded a voice saying: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”. The phrase refers to the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, while it is absent from that of John.
This is the only time of the appearance, on Earth, of the Holy and consubstantial and indivisible Trinity, under the full “mystery” of the Godhead. The theophany are so called because the voice of god was heard on earth. For what it’s named for a God+for the Surface. God looked on the earth, god+it seemed. When it was established to celebrate the memory of the fact of the Baptism of Jesus is not known with certainty. It seems, however, that came very early in the first Church of Christians. Clement of Alexandria (ΣτÏωμ. bibl. (a) says that some heretics, the Basilides gnostics at the beginning of the second century εόÏταζαν the day of the Baptism of the Lord “Ï€ÏοδιανυκτεÏεÏοντες” and that the feast that was in other men on 6 January, in other on January 10.
During the 3rd century, the feast seems κοινότατη throughout the Christian Church. So while the Gieseler ( Kirchengeschichte ,I, 376) held that the first Βασιλειδιανοί established the feast of the Epiphany of the Neander (Kirchengeschichte I, 386) raises the question: how by heretics was the Church?
John the Chrysostom admits and describes the feast as the ancient festival probably in Antioch the Great, and that from there they have received the Gnostics Βασιλειδιανοί… In the Apostolic Orders (38) the feast of Επιφανείων “ήγετο by the in this ανάδειξιν γεγενήσθαι of Christ’s divinity”.
At the end of the 3rd century added another meaning to the celebration that started to πανηγυÏίζεται and as a day of “in the flesh” φανεÏώσεως of the Lord. Thus in Alexandria during the Κασσιανό, and in Cyprus by Epifanio. From the era of this starts, at the more likely, and the celebration of Christmas.
In the 4th century, the feast of the Epiphany is celebrated with pomp throughout the eastern Church as the feast of the illumination of mankind through the Holy Baptism, where the name “The Lights”, the feast of Lights” (Gregory Îαζιανζηνός reason 39, Asteriou Αμάσ. Reason to “holidays Καλανδών”).
In the West the Epiphany occur in the mid-4th century, but by the time this appears in the Roman Church, and another feast dedicated to the in the flesh Birth of Jesus on December 25. When it was established that the date for Christmas to the whole Christian world was and the separation of the feast of the Epiphany on 6 January, in the middle of the 6th century.
Feast of the Epiphany – Why not dip it in the water to catch the cross
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