IN EPIPHANIA DOMINI
6 JANUARY 2018
SURGE, ILLUMINARE
ARISE, BE ENLIGHTENED, for this day, the light of Christ shone out from Bethlehem and illuminated the whole world, the salvation it heralds not limited to one people of one place in one time, but for people of every nation until the end of time, who would look to this light as their guide from this world to the next. And just as the light of the star guided the magi to meet the Saviour, so too do we need to willingly follow the light of Christ’s coming to encounter Him anew in our own lives this Christmas, and every Christmas, as the collective memories, hopes, and aspirations of the Church’s liturgical year draw us ever deeper into the mystery of Christ, to bear fruit in the personal reality of our lives in communion with Him.
And what is revealed by this infant wrapped in swaddling clothes? What did He reveal to the Wise Men from afar, and what does He continually reveal to us today, who approach Him in fervent homage and with humble awe? He reveals that although generation upon generation had been lost to sin and iniquity, He all the while had been their God, and that His chosen people had ever been all mankind; His desire always to unite the most beloved of His creation to Himself. He reveals that while we disdain the frailty of our flesh, He embraces it, taking that which He created to Himself so that by this Incarnation of God made Man, mankind might live anew in hope of becoming God. He reveals that that there is dignity in poverty, greatness in humility, and power in the vulnerability of love. And so, they knelt down and paid Him homage.
Yet their journey from their distant lands to the manger had not been without peril. Neither was their journey home a straight path. And so it is with our own journey to truly meet Christ as he reveals Himself. It is a journey that can be long and arduous, and can be littered with distractions and entrapments. But it is a journey we must undertake with resolve, for to meet Christ is to be taken up in to God’s loving plan of salvation; His gift of hope that will accompany us amid the many trials of our journey through life to life everlasting. For upon meeting Him our life’s journey becomes His – a journey from the crib to Calvary – a journey that may not be completed without the revelation he offers us today; without the hope that allows us to see beyond pain, beyond inevitable suffering, beyond the certainty of death, to life in God.
And for this gift of hope that shines from the light of His epiphany, we offer him our gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh – our industry; our deepest humility; all the days of our lives, until this life gives way to eternity.