3:57pm | Each year members of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church gather along Mother’s Beach to watch a sporting event of their own device involving the retrieval of a wooden cross flung into these chilly ocean waters.
This year there were 11 competitors, both boys and girls-girls having been allowed into the competition a few years ago, waiting on the back of a boat some 100 yards away from the dock where the signal to dive would be given after a few preliminary prayers and the blessing of the cross and cleansing of the water into which they would soon be submerged.
These 11 youths, rubbing arms and legs to bring warmth to their limbs, some splashing themselves with water while others more tepidly used their toes to test the temperature, said prayers of their own that those being recited on the dock by the elders would be mercifully brief.
A delay resulted when it was realized that the cross used each year in the competition had been left behind at the church and discussions ensued whither someone would have to go back for it.
In the end a makeshift cross was created from heavy blue tape and two found pieces of light wood by an enterprising onlooker. “A cross doesn’t have to have gold or silver adornments,” said His Eminence Metropolitan Gerasimos of San Francisco as he stood before the winner, 16 year-old Anthony Bussa.
And he told the smiling Bussa that each year thereafter it would be this simple cross that would be used in the annual competition that symbolized the baptism of Jesus Christ.
Thus a new tradition was formed and Bussa, cross in shivering hand, will forever have his name associated with the telling of its incarnation.
