Sunday before the Theophany of Our Lord/The Circumcision of Our Lord

Hello all and Merry Christmas! I hope your Christmas season is progressing peacefully and joyfully. We're doing well here and regrouping after the blizzard. We had to dig out, helped by post-storm milder weather that caused a lot of melting. And then we celebrated Christmas with our extended families later that week. :)

Last weekend we were happily able to return to Divine Liturgy, and New Year's Day this year heralded a focus on the coming feast of Theophany (Baptism of the Lord) and the circumcision of Our Lord. Father's homily addressed how circumcision was a sign of faith, and now that sign is baptism. We should all celebrate our baptism as a constant sign of the reality of our faith. It was all quite lovely. 😊

It was nice to be back with the small congregation again, and everyone seemed pleased to see us again. The kids have expressed to me that they do prefer attending the Divine Liturgy, for a myriad of reasons that are not exactly theological, but I do appreciate them talking to me about spiritual things in any capacity, and I want to do what is best for all of us. Mostly, they're better able to pay attention at Divine Liturgy because it is shorter (the English language liturgy is spoken and not chanted at this parish) and it, plus the Eastern style art and surroundings, engage them more. So for the time being, we're going to keep focusing our attending on attending here on Sundays as often as we can

This week, I have enjoyed using our Eastern style Advent wreath (6 tapers with one white pillar for Christmas day) with the Epiphany candles that came with it. All are white, and I surmised that we would light one every other day between Christmas and Epiphany, with the large pillar also being lit on the Epiphany itself (which as I type this, is today!). In the Eastern Church, Epiphany is always celebrated on January 6th, whereas the Latin rite celebrates it on the Sunday immediately following. You can see from my mid-week photo how we were moving through lighting the candles, and I think the entire family enjoyed this devotion, especially since we light the candles pretty much every evening now while we eat dinner, adding a new one every other day, whereas during Advent, we just light the candles on Sundays. This wreath has truly been a delight, and I'll be sad to put it away after tonight. I'll have a photo of the entire wreath lit up for next week's post!