On January 31, His Eminence Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver officiated at the Thyranoixia (Opening of the Doors) of the St. Efstathios Chapel.  Two days later, the first Divine Liturgy was celebrated at the chapel, commemorating the Presentation of our Lord and Savior in the Temple.   The chapel was then closed for a few weeks as construction of the south colonnade was completed.  The chapel is open once again now that we have entered the Lenten period, and all the weekday services are being held there.
On April 11, immediately following Divine Liturgy on the Saturday of Lazarus, the Bell Tower and the Diamantaras Administration Building will be blessed and dedicated.  The bells will chime for the first time during the Resurrection Service at midnight on Pascha, and the administration building will be ready for occupancy in late May following the Festival of Greece.  The Memorial Gardens behind the Chapel and the administration building are beginning to take shape with the construction of the perimeter wall.

A Brand New, Ancient Baptismal Font for our Greek Orthodox Enclave

Far away, perched on a plateau in the folds of desert that skirt the Dead Sea, there once stood a place where Byzantine Christian pilgrims, searching for God’s presence on Earth, may very well have found it.  That place, tucked into the Negev desert in southern Jordan, near the ancient city of Petra, was once a Byzantine monastery.

There, among dormitories for visiting pilgrims, archeologists have uncovered the ruins of a chapel.  One of the chapel’s apses, facing west, contained a baptismal font, carved into the ground in the shape of a cruciform cross   Imagine the sublime joy early converts to Christianity would have experienced as they descended into the holy water, while the priest intoned, “In the name of the Father . . . and of the Son . . . and of the Holy Spirit.”  . While many fonts, like the one at the monastery near Petra, were carved out of the ground, still others were free-standing, chiseled by hand out of single, monolithic pieces of marble.  The free standing ones allowed the officiating priest to stand outside the font, while the convert, inside the font, was immersed.

Whether chiseled into the ground, or free-standing, the baptismal font has played an integral role in the path of Christianity through the ages. Which brings us to today: here at St. Basil, underneath the copper-domed St. Efstathios chapel, sits a baptismal font carved out of a single piece of marble.  Modeled upon a font thought to have sat in a church in Constantinople during Byzantium, the new font is similar in every way to those in which untold numbers have been baptized for more than 1,700 years. 

Notably, Gilberto Lopez and his brother, Edmundo, designed the font based on the ancient concept of the Golden Section, a theory that has informed much of the world’s most cherished architecture and art, from the Egyptian pyramids to the Greek Parthenon to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.   

A work of liturgical art unto itself, the new font, carved from a single piece of marble, measures 6’ 1 ½” long by 4’ 4” wide, and stands 2’ 6” high, with three steps in the interior to allow those being baptized to descend into the baptismal waters, just as Christians have done through the ages.  What a blessing it is to have in our midst this beautiful link to ancient times.

As we recently celebrated the feast of Epiphany, we are reminded of that awesome moment when John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the River Jordan and the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus’ head, declaring “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:22). May we pray that God will be well pleased with our focus and dedication and love here, nestled in an enclave, and that we, like those who ventured through the desert sands so very long ago, might find God’s presence on Earth.

On the south side of the construction trailer, there is an example of what the outside walls of the sanctuary will look like when completed.