By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
Rise up in splendor,
Jerusalem! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you. See, darkness covers the earth, and thick
clouds cover the peoples; but upon you the LORD shines, and over you appears
his glory.
Isaiah 60:1-2
And behold, the star that
they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over
the place where the child was. They were
overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child
with Mary his mother. Matthew 2:9B-11A
Piety
Our piety is visible
through the gifts we give to Jesus. The
gifts of the Magi have profound significance.
Gold, frankincense and myrrh reveal his kingship, his Godhead and his
mortality. Our piety is the gold of our
lives. Our frankincense is the prayer of
our lives. And as we live our humanness
in the name of Jesus his mortality has an echo in whom we are in his name. The Epiphany is the celebration of our
inclusion in the mystery of God’s love for us revealed in the word made flesh. How we offer ourselves to Christ is the dream
of our destiny being realized in the journey we make to be close to Christ in
all we say and do. Piety is the richness
of our closeness.
Study
We explore the various
possibilities of gifting the Lord with our lives. We must fear the Lord and worship him
faithfully with our whole heart. Our
fear of Christ is in the realization of ways we do not reflect him. The star we follow is seen in the example of
all the good people of our lives. Our
goal is the journey that brings us closer to Christ in what we say and do in
his name. The glory of the Lord shines
over us in the example of Pope Francis who has opened up the beauty of the
ordinary to us. He has made it wonderful
to be alive by the good that he does for the needy in his life. We do not have to be brilliant to see the
light that he shines over us in his following Christ so closely. His very humanness makes the mortality of
Christ all the more real in how well he stands in for Christ as his
representative here on earth.
Action
Christ is our way, our
truth and our life. We struggle to be
closer to him by what we do for the least ones of our brothers and sisters. We know that whatever we do for them Christ
considers as done for himself. We are
his hands and his feet by what we do to bring the goodness of God’s love closer
to those who have no family and support system.
We make up what is wanting to the suffering of Christ in the words of
Paul by the way we become the hands and the feet of Christ. It is beautiful to see how the Christians
love one another. The richness of the
Church is in the poor that we serve that makes Christ part of our every day
when we share the good things of our lives with those who do not have what we
have.
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