Make All Creation New

What an interesting parallel. My wife noticed the close connection between this church sign, which we pass to and from the monastery church, and the pre-Theophany (Epiphany) hymn we have been hearing the past few days.

Compare that with the last line of the troparion of the Forefeast of Theophany: "Christ has appeared to make all creation new." The troparion is making reference to Christ coming in the flesh—this is why Theophany is tied to Nativity—in order to restore all creation.

I would imagine this coincidence is as simple as this. The church sign was simply looking for a "new" theme to put on their sign for the new year. I do not want to discuss that sign too much; I have too many questions about its meaning and I do not want to look like I am picking on someone's theology. The troparion, however, is the yearly-repeated, core essence of the purpose of Christ's coming on earth.

And it is no coincidence that Theophany, the baptism of our Lord, occurs at the first of the year. It was intentionally placed at the new year because of the cleansing aspect of baptism, thus new-ness at the new year. I do not remember a lot about this, but if you wanted to look up more, I read about it in Pr. Alexander Schmemann's Introduction to Liturgical Theology.

And since I am on church signs, just a few days ago, we saw what is one of the best church signs I have ever seen, also on a Methodist Church, but ten minutes down the road in Hamlin, Pennsylvania: "Mary was the first to carry the Gospel." Beautiful. You can unpack that one for quite a while. I might have to come back to that one.