Today all creation is filled with joy;

Why Come for Theophany—When You’re Already Tired of the Holidays?

“Today all creation is filled with joy;
Christ has appeared in the Jordan.”

By January 5–6, many of us are exhausted. Christmas has been full—of services, obligations, family, travel, emotion. And so a quiet thought creeps in: Surely I’ve done enough. Surely God understands if I sit this one out.

But Theophany is precisely the feast that refuses that logic.

The Feast of Epiphany is not an optional afterword to Christmas. It is the Church’s uncompromising proclamation that Christ did not come simply to inspire us, comfort us, or decorate our lives with meaning. He came to enter the world as it is—and change it. Not later. Not eventually. Now.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann reminds us that the world turned away from God, forgot Him, stopped seeing Him, and sank into darkness and death. But God did not turn away from the world. In the Baptism of Christ, God steps back into His creation and gives it to us again—cleansed, radiant, and filled with His glory.

Christ steps into the Jordan—not pristine water, not ideal conditions, but muddy, ordinary, human water. He steps into what we would rather avoid. And He sanctifies it. “And behold, the heavens were opened…” (Mt 3:16)

The heavens are opened not because the world was ready—but because God is faithful.

This is why we bless water—not only inside the church, but downtown at the San Anselmo Creek. This is not religious nostalgia. It is a stational liturgy: a public refusal to accept the idea that faith is meant to stay hidden, private, or safely confined indoors. We process to the creek to bear witness that this world, this town, these waters, and our very lives belong to God.

We celebrate renewal. We watch the priest sprinkle holy water on walls, bodies, homes, and creation itself—not as a symbol, but as a judgment on despair and resignation. Christ has come to renew all creation, and He begins with what is worn down and overlooked.

Come and let the waters speak again the truth we forget so easily:

This world is still God’s world.
Your life is still capable of being made new.