Blessing of Cayuga Lake rings in New Year for Lansing church

In the Greek Orthodox Christian community, the Saturday after Jan. 6 holds significant importance. Around the world, churches bless the nearest body of water to remember when Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River.

Saturday, Holy Apostles Church in Lansing joined with St. Catherine Greek Orthodox Church in Ithaca to bless Cayuga Lake.

The tradition has been part of the denomination for 2,000 years, but it was the first time that Holy Apostles and St. Catherine joined to bless Cayuga Lake together.

“It’s fairly common for the Orthodox churches in a given area to calibrate on this,” Holy Apostles priest Joel Brady said. “If they’re all going to be blessing the same body of water, it kind of makes sense for them to do it all together. I’ve lived in a few places where I’ve experienced that. Especially here, where we have a body of water that especially defines the landscape of where we are, it seems like a good thing to do.”

The blessing took place at Stewart Park and was attended by 15-20 people from both parishes. The ceremony consists of readings from the Bible and traditional Greek Orthodox texts, culminating in Brady throwing a wooden cross attached to a string into the lake to bless it.

Despite the cold temperatures, a designated person was assigned to go into the lake and retrieve the cross. Brady then used an aspergillum, an instrument used to sprinkle holy water, to splash water on those attending. 

Brady said that the two parishes had started planning to bless the lake together before the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, made gatherings more difficult.

Previously, Brady said that Holy Apostles used Myers Park to bless the lake, but in joining with St. Catherine, which is located at 120 W. Seneca St. in Ithaca, Stewart Park seemed more centrally located.

St. Catherine Priest Stephen Gousios said that the tradition is an opportunity for Greek Orthodox churches to celebrate together, so it made sense for the two parishes to join in the blessing of the lake.

“It’s a great opportunity for us Orthodox Christians here in America, because we are a minority, to come together and show our unity in our faith,” he said. “We are one Orthodox church with different parishes here and there.”

The tradition is to celebrate the Feast of Christ’s Baptism, an important event in the Greek Orthodox calendar. 

Brady said that water and blessings serve as a large part of Orthodox churches’ ministry efforts. After blessing the nearest body of water, churches will bless water in the church to be used in other blessings throughout the year.

“The understanding there, for us, is that baptism is the cleansing of our sins but he (Jesus), being the sinless one, is actually cleansing the waters by going in himself,” Brady said. “With water being a basic element of life, it’s cleansing and sanctifying all of life. All over the world, Orthodox churches bless the nearest body of water to them, and bodies of water are all connected to each other, so it’s really sanctifying the whole of the world and the whole of life.”

In August, Holy Apostles blessed the Route 34B bridge, which sits next to the church. Brady said that the church will also bless homes, and in some communities, Greek Orthodox churches bless farms as harvest season comes.

Gousios said blessing things in the world is an essential part of the Greek Orthodox faith.

“We try to sanctify the whole of creation, and as we’re sanctifying ourselves for a life in Christ, we don’t take a negative look on the world, and that it’s a fallen world,” he said. “[P]art of our life as Orthodox Christians is to sanctify and enlighten and change the world to God’s glory,  [to] use the gifts he gave us to give back for his glory.”

The blessing of the lake is always in January, which in New York means it is usually very cold. Saturday saw temperatures in the mid-30s, with modest winds and occasional sleet.

For both Brady and Gousios, it might as well have been middle-of-July weather, compared to what they have experienced in the past.

Gousios, who is originally from Buffalo, said he was serving a parish in Ocean City, Maryland and it got so cold one year that when he was blessing the congregation with water from the Atlantic Ocean, the water froze in midair before it fell on the parishioners.

Brady remembered a particularly difficult blessing in 2018, his first year with the church. After serving in Louisiana, the cold and wind of an upstate New York January caught him off-guard at Myers Park.

“It was quite cold and especially windy. The winds kind of come down the lake, and Stewart Park isn’t as bad as Myers Park,” he said. “It was a very dramatic effect, my vestments were kind of billowing out like a big balloon behind me.”

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