VENTURA : Holy Epiphany Is Celebrated Despite Drizzle

A steady drizzle did little to quell the enthusiasm of more than 100 Greek Orthodox worshipers, who in Ventura on Sunday celebrated a centuries-old tradition commemorating the baptism of Jesus Christ.

Parishioners of the St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Camarillo spent the morning in church services.

But in the afternoon, they gathered along the marina’s edge as Father Cyril Loeb blessed the water and tossed a wooden cross into the Ventura Harbor.

Seconds later, teen-agers Darius Mikelatos and Gregory Brown dove headfirst into the chilly water to retrieve the eight-inch icon, a ceremony honoring the Holy Epiphany, or the baptism of Jesus Christ.

“The water’s not that bad,” said Darius, who reached the cross first because he was the quicker of the two wet-suited swimmers. “It was pretty easy.”

Loeb said the tradition goes back to the early part of the 1st Century, when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.

The rain “just made it necessary for us to carry umbrellas,” he said, moments after dipping a wreath of basil into holy water and sprinkling it over the harbor. “The divers get wet anyway, so it doesn’t bother them.”

Michael Pateras, an Oxnard construction worker who was born in Greece, said it is a Greek tradition to bless the waterways nearest the parish on the Sunday nearest to Jan. 6.

“It comes down from our forefathers,” he said. “The waters every year must be blessed by the holy water. It’s supposed to be like a miracle every year.”

Parishioner Lou Leopold, a computer engineer from Camarillo, said he looks forward to the celebration every year.

“I find it spiritually moving,” he said, sitting down to a traditional Greek meal inside a restaurant after the ceremony. “It’s like a baptism of the new year.”