By Fr. George Morelli [1]
“And the Spirit, in the form of a dove, confirmed the truthfulness of His word. O Christ our God, who hast revealed Thyself and hast enlightened the world, glory to Thee!”
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. (Mt 9:12)
The Feast of the Theophany of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ brings greater understanding of God’s encounter with His Chosen People to reveal to them the full meaning of the coming of the Messiah, the Christ. At the time, God’s words were in the words of St. Paul (1 Cor 13:12) seen “dimly”, by the Old Testament Patriarchs, Prophets and even those surrounding the birth and early life of Christ. The significance of the great feast of the Nativity was ill understood by the participants. Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God, had little understanding of her role. Her free will response by God’s grace to respond to His request for to bear His Son was on a human level, a blind act of trust. As St. Luke records: “And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. For with God nothing will be impossible.’ And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’” (Lk 1 35, 37-38)
We know that Our Lord was to become the physician and healer of soul and body. The Theophany feast, the zenith of the Nativity Season, gives us the first revelation of who is the healer of the world: “And he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people.” (Mt 4:23). Jesus, “…who was born in a cavern and lay in a manger for our salvation …”[i] was as the Theophany Troparian proclaims: “When Thou, O Lord, wast baptized in the Jordan, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest! For the voice of the Father bare witness to Thee, and called Thee His beloved Son! And the Spirit, in the form of a dove, confirmed the truthfulness of His word. O Christ our God, who hast revealed Thyself and hast enlightened the world, glory to Thee!”
The dim understanding of the Messiah before the Theophany
Before the Theophany, the comprehension of the meaning of God’s contact with mankind was tenebrous. The ancient one’s understanding of God’s words could be conceived as firm, but comprehension of His promises obscure. St. Gregory Palamas makes this clear: “He [the Father] made it plain that all those other things spoken earlier through the prophets, the giving of laws, the promises, the granting of sonship, were imperfect, and were neither pronounced nor accomplished in accordance with what God willed beforehand. Rather, they looked towards this present fulfillment, and through what has now been accomplished they too have been brought to perfection.” Let us explore some of the Old Testament promises and see how they can be more fully understood in the light of the Son of God, our true Physician.
The promise of Wisdom
In the Book of Sirach, we read: “From the mouth of the Most High I came forth, and mist-like covered the earth. In the highest heavens did I dwell.” (Sirach 24:3-4) The full meaning of wisdom would not be glimpsed until St. Paul told the Corinthians: “He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption; (1Cor 1:30). We could consider Wisdom, begotten of the Father, as the Person of the Son, Jesus Christ, who is our wisdom. Wisdom guides the breath of His power. The word Jesus is the manifestation of wisdom both eternally, in the creation of the world and in everything He is sent to accomplish. As Solomon tells us “Wisdom stretches out from one end of the earth to the other.” (Wis 8:1).
Wisdom as a human attribute is the foundation of all healing virtue. But most importantly it is, as St. Paul tells us, a gift of the Holy Spirit: “To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom …” (1Cor 12:8) It is not so much knowledge as it is the human prudence inspired by God as how to live the life of holiness. The ultimate root of wisdom is the fear of God. When the angels at Our Lord’s birth proclaimed, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!” [ii] they were proclaiming the fear (awesomeness) of God. Men of ‘good will’, are those who manifest this wisdom and live a life of holiness, a life where the Christ Child is born in them, mind body and spirit, which ultimately leads to the healing of body, mind and spirit. The true meaning of who the healing Christ Child as God, would be revealed at the Theophany.
Christ, the promise of the Covenant
God, the Father made a covenant with His Chosen People. The writer of Exodus (3:2) records God’s appearance to Moses: “And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.” God’s message of deliverance was quite specific. God told Moses: “I have come down to deliver them [His Chosen People] out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” We could consider the deliverance of God’s people from the yoke of Pharaoh to pre-figure redemption of the People of the New Covenant from the yoke of the evil one. Moses was told by God: “Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.” (Ex 19: 5-6). But God’s work of redemption was not to be limited to this concrete deliverance. It was to be a deliverance from sin and death universally open to all mankind. Jesus, is born to redeem and heal us all. Christ the Ruler would rule over the new law or covenant with His people.
The promise: rulers shall be silent nations shall have recourse
Isaiah the Prophet foretold: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord… In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek, (Is 11:1-2, 10) … [and] … so shall he startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they shall see, and that which they have not heard they shall understand.” (Is 52:15). Although nebulous to our forefathers of the Old Covenant, it is the Christ, God’s Son, one of the Trinity as revealed in the Theophany Feast, who is the new branch. Christ as physician and healer will extend beyond individuals but include nations as well. We too, as the body of Christ are to be the extension of this healing. We are the banner around which the world should surround and be the unifying principle of all nations. The insignia of the Cross rests atop the manger of Christ, the newborn King. By our wisdom, prudence, leading to our holiness, with Christ as our Ruler we too can be shoots of the Root of Jesse.
The promise of the key to the kingdom
Again the Prophet Isaiah (22:22) tells us: “And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.” For the ancient Jews the six pointed star was the symbol of this key and shield of David. (Parsch, (1962). For the ancient Jews it was a sign of the promised Messiah. At the Nativity Feast we can see it as the Star of Bethlehem. The Theophany Feast now leads us to the understanding that the key is the key of authority. David’s key of authority is passed to Christ in His birth, who in turn passed it to His Church. As we are members of Christ’s Body the Church, we have the power by God’s grace to open ourselves to Him, be healed by His grace, shut out Satan and have open to us the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The promise of Dayspring: Life Eternal
In the Wisdom of Solomon (7:26) we read: “For she [Wisdom-God] is the radiance of eternal light.” The fullness of the Wisdom was not known by those before Christ. It was God’s voice and the appearance of the Holy Spirit in the form of a Dove at the Theophany which enlightened the world. It is this illumination that would allow St. Paul to open his epistle to the Hebrews (1:1-2) with this message: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” It is in this context, the words of the priest Simeon, whom the Mary and Joseph, the parents of Jesus presenting Him back to His Father in the temple can be understood:
“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel.” (Lk 2: 29-32)
With the birth of Christ, we have a rising sun that heals us by dispersing spiritual darkness and conquering death. This is spoken of so eloquently by the aging priest Zechariah, the father of the great Prophet and Fore-runner of Christ, the Baptist John who said: “…through the tender mercy of our God, when the day shall dawn upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Lk 1: 78-79).
Do we give life, light, warmth, joy peace and health in our lives? Do we penetrate, darkness, the dark cellars of the world wet with its rottenness? As members of Christ’s Body, the Church, who like Christ, have by our baptism “put on Christ” [iii] must have His light shine on and reflect off us to all mankind surrounding us (Morelli, 2007). As St. Theophylact (2004) tells us: “He arouse like the sun from their midst, and those who are wise have Him as their boast.”
~Father George Morelli, “The Theophany and Healing,” Website of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of America, http://www.antiochian.org/node/18687.
[i] From the Divine Liturgy Prothesis Prayer.
[ii] Some translations such as the Challoner-Reims Version: “Hosanna in the Highest, Peace in earth to men of good will.” What is not correct is ‘good will toward men’.
[iii] Baptismal Hymn of Pascha: “As may of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Alleluia.
REFERENCES
Morelli, G. (2006, December 21). The Ethos of Orthodox Christian Healing.http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliHealing.php [2].
Morelli, G. (2007 January 12). A Theophany Within. http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles7/MorelliTheophany.php [3]
Parsch, P. (1962). The Church’s Year of Grace. (Vol. 1). Collegeville, MI: The Liturgical Press.
St. Gregory Palamas, (2008). The saving work of Christ (C. Veniamin, Ed.). Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor Publishing.
St. Theophylact. (2004). The explanation by Blessed Theophylact of the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. House Springs, MO: Chrysostom Press.
Vlachos, Bishop Hierotheos, (1994). Orthodox Psychotherapy: The Science of the Fathers. Lavadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery.
Vlachos, Bishop Hierotheos, (1998). The Mind of the Orthodox Church. Lavadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery.
