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January 8, 2012

Epiphany 2012 B

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. Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by the radiance of your dawning. 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. It was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed 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-11b

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

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 refractions 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.

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 needs to be subjected to him. He is king when he is the first of our desires. We reduce all of our desires to our 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 frangibility 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.