{"id":2083,"date":"2015-01-04T10:05:13","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T14:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=2083"},"modified":"2015-01-02T16:27:14","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T20:27:14","slug":"january-4-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=2083","title":{"rendered":"January 4, 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

You have revealed Yourself to the world today, and Your light, O Lord,
\nhas shined upon us. We recognize You and exclaim to You:
\nYou have come and revealed Yourself, O Inaccessible Light! <\/span>
\nKondak of Theophany<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"theophany\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Theophany is the original feast that celebrates God\u2019s manifestation<\/em> of Himself to humankind in the person of Jesus. It celebrates one of the events that took place at the beginning of His ministry. It was, therefore, remembered by the early Christians. It wasn\u2019t until much after His death that Christians began to look into other events in His life and begin establishing feasts to remember the events.<\/p>\n

This manifestation <\/em>is of great significance since it revealed, once Christians thought about it and decided that Jesus was also God, that through Jesus God revealed Himself to be Three Persons in One Godhead. If God were only one person, He could not have joined Himself to His creation and remain also God. As a Trinity of Persons, it is quite conceivable that He joined Himself to His creation through the Second Person, the Son – that He became incarnate <\/em>as a human.<\/p>\n

Only Christianity\u2019s belief in the Trinity allows it, out of the three Abrahamic, monotheistic religions, to believe that God understands what it means to be human. God, through the Person of Jesus, actually experienced human life on this earth, thus giving God great insight into what it means to be a human.<\/p>\n

When you think about this unique belief you can easily understand why it took the Church more than three centuries to find the right words and ideas to express it. The evidence was so great, as the Church reviewed the life and activities of Jesus, that it was guided by God\u2019s Spirit to come to this conclusion. Neither Judaism or Islam, guarding so rigidly the idea of One God, can come to this conclusion about God.<\/p>\n

By using Greek philosophical words and ideas, Christianity has been able to maintain that God is One and yet a Trinity of Persons. This idea of God becoming a man in order to reveal to humankind how to make use of this earthly\u00a0\u00a0 existence, just makes so much more sense to me and, I believe, expresses God\u2019s great love for humankind.<\/p>\n

The God of Christianity truly knows the struggles that are a part of human life. He also knows that the way He\u00a0\u00a0 created human life is good since it allows for free will and, at the same time, opportunities to spiritually grow. I don\u2019t know about you, but I would rather worship a God Who loves me.
\n
\nTheophany speaks of God\u2019s love<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You have revealed Yourself to the world today, and Your light, O Lord, has shined upon us. We recognize You and exclaim to You: You have come and revealed Yourself, O Inaccessible Light! Kondak of Theophany Theophany is the original … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-liturgy-of-the-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2083"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2090,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083\/revisions\/2090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}