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
60:1-3
You have heard of the stewardship of God’s
grace that was given to me for your benefit, namely, that the mystery was made
known to me by revelation. Ephesians 3:2-3a
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. They prostrated
themselves and did him homage. Matthew
2:9b-11a
Piety
The light of Christ shines in us as our
piety. The great saints make Christ real to their time and age by
their piety shining out as the light of Christ found form and substance in the
goodness of their lives. Hopefully we are more than faint
reflections of the glory of Christ. We are created to the image and
the likeness of Christ by our being created in his image. All of us
are reflections of the glory and the justice of God in Christ. Christ
is the fullness of God’s love made flesh and we are his reflection in the
goodness of our lives.
Study
Epiphany literally it means open to or appear
to. We all claim epiphanies in our lives at one time or another. It was a magic
moment in my life when I learned with enough application of my mind, heart and
soul I would do almost everything I set my heart on.
The Epiphany Feast today has a number of
meanings for us. It refers to the one Lord including everyone in his good news.
But it also implies the gifts that are given at Epiphany. Gold, gift to
kingship, frankincense, symbol of prayer and myrrh, the anointment for death,
are gifts that are prophetic. How this plays out in the life of the community
gives the community the right to its name.
We all are following some star. There is a
light that shines in the darkness of our hearts that is the call to worship our
God. We are created for that worship of God. God is love and we are called to
be men and women of love. The best of ourselves is the gift of gold we bring on
this feast day. Our coming to worship is the frankincense of our prayer. What
we have dedicated our lives to is the myrrh of the offering of ourselves.
The prophet tells the world what is wrong.
Even tells the community what it needs to do. All the social outreach programs
of the community are how it exercises the role of prophet. When our leadership
of the community opens up another task to be done the prophet role is being
fulfilled.
We study the road that would lead us to the
glory of Christ. His star shines out on our world in all the good
people of our lives. We become the light of Christ by our walking
closer each day to Christ. We discover him in each other’s
refraction of the light of Christ. He lives in our world by the
victory of his Resurrection. We bring a little bit of heaven to our
world by the good we do in imitation of Christ and his saints.
Action
Our first action is our response to the
kingship of Christ. God is honored in how we make Christ the king of
our hearts. The first question for each new day of our lives is a
quick invitation to Christ to take over our hearts as the primary desire of all
that we seek in life. We give to Christ all the love of our
hearts. We need to love him with all our minds, hearts and
souls. There needs to be nothing we seek more than Christ. Every
created thing that could turn my heart away from Christ needs to be subjected
to him. He is king when he is the first of our desires. We
reduce all of our desires to a gift of gold for him. Thus he is our
king in each moment of our day. Each breath becomes our incense of
adoration of his Godhead. We make myrrh in our acknowledgement of
the fragility of every human creation. Our awareness of how nothing
is forever makes forever of all creation in its passing to be one with God who
was willing to be one with our fragility. We make our effort to
return all to the God who has given us his all in his Son. Naked we came
into the world and naked we will go out in the myrrh we have made of all
created things. Christ, the gift of the Father’s love for us,
becomes the gift of our love for God in our transformation into his love for
the Father.
* Originally Published on January 6, 2013
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