My dear people:
The season of Christmastide flows beautifully into the season of Epiphany. Today the pagan world recognizes that this Child in the manger is not only fully human but is also the fully divine Son of God. “Manifestation” or “revealing” is the meaning of the Greek word “epiphany.” The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem on Christmas night was unnoticed by the world. Yet, it was necessary that the arrival of the Messiah be “disclosed”, and that His divinity be revealed. These moments of “un-hiding” who Jesus truly was are moments of “epiphany.”
Today we recall the arrival of the Magi, who came to worship the newborn King. This is the moment of the Epiphany. And yet it was not the only epiphany. The whole life of Jesus reveals who God is, and thus, alongside the big epiphanies, there are also the little, daily epiphanies of Jesus. Joseph and Mary, during the long, hidden years of life with Jesus in Nazareth, doubtless saw many little epiphanies of God. And here is an important implication for Christians: it is these little epiphanies of God that Christians are called to recognize in their own lives.
Every new Christian begins a new life at baptism. In this new life, a person is freed from the bondage of sin and is ushered into a new way of life that points toward heaven. A slow process of transformation is now underway, and each day the person is becoming more Christ-like. As the days of the earthly exile pass by, as the Christian being formed into another Christ, the individual Christian is shaped more and more into the person of Jesus Christ. Thus, a Christian life itself should be an epiphany, a manifesting to the world, of God-among-us, of Emanuel. But this process is supported by the Christian himself or herself being able to recognize the God-with-us showing His face to him or her from moment to moment.
This opens up a special panorama of Christian living. As the work of grace begins its task, Christian life on earth becomes more and more like the life of heaven. Heaven and earth do touch. There, in the circle of family life, as in the hidden years of Nazareth for Mary and Joseph, God’s presence makes itself clear in a series of little epiphanies. What are some of the little epiphanies of Christian living? For a Christian, “a shared family meal, with the joys and interactions that come from simply being together as family, becomes a foretaste of what heaven will be”. “Every time spouses love each other and forgive each other and make sacrifice for each other, there is a foretaste of something even greater yet to come.” “When I am lost in wonder and in awe before a beautiful sunrise or sunset, here is an epiphany or another moment in which my soul recognizes God’s grandeur.” “A quiet moment in a chapel alongside a flickering red candle where I bow my head and bend my knees in adoration to acknowledge God’s presence.”
When I am stranded on the road side alone at night and a motorist would stop to help me with my flat tire, there is an epiphany of God!
In these little epiphanies, we are recognizing that God is with us. Indeed, the epiphanies of God are a daily gift to strengthen those who live faithful Christian lives.
The terrorist attack on New Year’s Eve in New Orleans is an act of pure evil. Many New Yorkers suffered recently in what I consider acts of pure evil. And if I include all the madness going on in the world, I cannot but feel suffocated by evil – if it weren’t for the Epiphany and the more numerous epiphanies of God’s presence through goodness. Through His epiphanies, God shows me that evil shall not have the upper hand. Evil shall be defeated, because our good God continues to break through into our world in order to rescue His people: from despair, from hopelessness, from fatalism, from giving up, from surrendering to cynicism, from capitulating to madness, irrationality, and inhumanity. Without my Christian, faith I would have succumbed to despair. Epiphany reminds me that, if I look carefully, even in the midst of darkness, light is already rising in the East. The Holy Mass! And thus, we Christians must be truly the occasions of God’s epiphany to the world!
Padre