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The Feast of the Epiphany is one of the Seven Major Feasts of our Lord, celebrated on 11 Tobe of every Coptic year. The word “Epiphany” refers to the “Divine Appearance,” where the Holy Trinity appeared to Mankind in an obvious and clear way. Many Churches celebrated the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord and His baptism on the same day until the end of the 4th century, when a decision was made to celebrate the events separately. As a whole, the Feast of the Epiphany was of extreme importance to the Church, particularly in Egypt, a day when the Patriarch of Alexandria would announce the commencing days of the Great Lent, the Passion Week (Pascha), and the feast of the Resurrection for that year, to which all the churches of the world would follow.

On this day, the Lord Christ was baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, not for repentance, as the rest of the world, or because of His need to, but rather on the behalf of and for the sake of humanity, as well as revealing to us the Holy Trinity, transfigured and glorified. St. Luke speaks of this in his gospel saying: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’” (Lk. 3:21-22). From these verses, we notice that through the baptism of the Lord Christ, the heavens were opened once again after Adam was prevented from returning to the Garden of Eden. The Holy Trinity is also revealed to us in this passage; the Father by His voice and witness to Christ, the Son baptized in the River, and the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove on the Lord Christ.

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source:Mikhail, Deacon Albair Gamal, The Essentials in the Deacon’s Service, (Shobra, Egypt: Shikolani, 2002), p.289-291. Translated from Arabic by Ragy Sharkawy, edited by Alexander A-Malek.