As we celebrate Theophany today let us keep in mind Fr Alexander Schmemann's point about encountering the revelation of all water and matter as holy and avoid the temptation to locate and box our encounter with the Holy Mysteries in the categories of "sacred" and "profane":
"...to bless water, making it "holy water,” may have two entirely different meanings. It may mean, on the one hand, the transformation of something profane, and thus religiously void or neutral, into something sacred, in which case the main religious meaning of "holy water” is precisely that it is no longer "mere” water, and is in fact opposed to it—as the sacred is to the profane. Here the act of blessing reveals nothing about water, and thus about matter or world, but on the contrary makes them irrelevant to the new function of water as "holy water.” The sacred posits the profane as precisely profane, i.e., religiously meaningless.
On the other hand, the same act of blessing may mean the revelation of the true "nature” and "destiny” of water, and thus of the world—it may be the epiphany and the fulfillment of their "sacramentality.” By being restored through the blessing to its proper function, the "holy water” is revealed as the true, full, adequate water, and matter becomes again means of communion with and knowledge of God.
Now anyone who is acquainted with the content and the text of the great prayer of blessing of water—at Baptism and Epiphany—knows without any doubt that they belong to the second of the two meanings mentioned above, that their term of reference is not the dichotomy of the sacred and the profane, but the "sacramental” potentiality of creation in its totality, as well as in each of its elements. Yet anyone who is acquainted with our liturgical piety— in this case the "comprehension” by the immense majority of the faithful of the meaning of "holy water”—knows equally well that it is the first meaning which triumphs here to the virtual exclusion of the second one. And the same analysis can be applied, with the same results, to practically every aspect of worship: to sacraments, to the liturgy of time, to heortology, etc. "Sacramentality” has been replaced everywhere by "sacrality,” "epiphany” by an almost magical incrustation into time and matter (the "natural” ), by the "supernatural.”
What is truly disturbing here is that such liturgical piety, such understanding and experience of worship, not only is in no way a challenge to secularism, but is in fact one of its very sources. For it leaves the world profane, i’e., precisely secular, in the deepest sense of this term: as totally incapable of any real communication, with the Divine, of any real transformation and transfiguration. Having nothing to reveal about world and matter, about time and nature, this idea and this experience of worship "disturb” nothing, question nothing, challenge nothing, are indeed "applicable” to nothing. They can therefore peacefully "coexist” with any secular ideology, any form of secularism. And there is virtually no difference here between liturgical "rigorists,” i.e., those who stress long services, compliance with rubrics and the Typicon, and liturgical "liberals,” always ready and anxious to shorten, adapt, and adjust. For in both cases what is denied is simply the. continuity between "religion” and "life,” the very function of worship as power of transformation, judgment, and change. Again, paradoxically and tragically, this type of approach towards worship and this kind of liturgical experience are indeed the source and the support of secularism."
+ Fr Alexander Schmemann, For Life of the World, 131-133
