Homily for the
Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord
5 January 2014
5 January 2014
“God
has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to
me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know
it in this life but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a
bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall
do good. I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth
in my own place while not intending it – if I do but keep His Commandments.
Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown
away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my
perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does
nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may
throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink,
hide my future from me – still He knows what He is about.”
These words of Blessed John Henry
Newman, the great English theologian of the Nineteenth Century, could be words
that our Lord used while He lived on this Earth. This prayer not only helped
this great Cardinal of the Church in understanding who he was or what he was
all about, but also gives to us a helping hand in coming to understand what
this particular solemnity we celebrate today is all about.
Think about it: Our God has created each
one of us to do something on this Earth that no other person can do. Sure, I
may be one priest among thousands, but there is only one person who can live
the priesthood the way that I do, and that’s me. Yes, there are many married
couples in our world right now, and none of them live their marriage vows
exactly the same because of what each husband and wife bring to the table by
who they are as individuals.
The same could be said of Jesus: There
can only be one eternal Son of God, “begotten, not made, consubstantial with
the Father”, who entered this world to redeem and save the creation that was
spoken forth from His mouth. And this was God’s plan from eternity.
But as we celebrate the Solemnity of the
Epiphany of the Lord this day, we recognize that it is the day in which the
world came to know who Jesus was – and is! The Magi enter into the picture as
those not of the Jewish faith – the Gentiles – who have seen the revelation of
God in the Incarnation of Jesus. The gifts that they bring – the gold,
frankincense and myrrh – are simply ways to understand and identify who this
God-made-man truly is.
When you stop and think about it, the
presents we give to friends and family come from a knowledge of who they are.
When I was four or five, my parents gave me a little drum set for Christmas,
which in retrospect, for them, may not have been the smartest idea, for I was
soon after enrolled in piano lessons. But the recognized in their child a
talent for music, and they wanted to see that developed.
So, too, are the gifts given to Jesus.
The Magi knew who He was, and the presents they presented reflected their
knowledge of who and what this Child was, and who and what He was to become:
·
Gold: Presented to Jesus
to represent the kingship He would be inheriting from David; given to our Lord
to recognize the anointing into not just earthly royalty, but an anointing that
truly ordained Him as the Christ, the Messiah, the “Anointed One”;
·
Frankincense: Presented to our
Lord as truly Someone who was divine. This speaks volumes of the Magi’s understanding
that this Child’s anointing as the Messiah was not just the establishment of an
earthly kingdom, but leading toward a redemption with supernatural consequences,
actions that only one who is Divine could undertake;
·
Myrrh: Presenting to our
Lord myrrh, the Magi added the reality of what Jesus would have to undergo so
as to redeem and sanctify the people of the world: suffering and death. They
knew that this Child was unlike any other in the world, for this Child was born
to die. Myrrh is a perfume used in the burial rites of the ancient Jews, and so
the Magi were presenting to Joseph and Mary the vivid reality of what this
Child was to undergo for the sake of His people.
And now that we continue to grow in our
relationship with God, we come to understand that as we present our gifts, our
talents, our very selves to the Lord as gifts for Him, He, in turn, gives us
HIS VERY SELF, so that we are able to do that work for which He has committed
us to do, and no one else. The gift of Himself which He gives to us must become
our epiphany, our revelation, to understand how we are to be committed to the
work He has given us to do in this life.
The Magi point the way to Christ not just by
following the star, but by presenting to him the gifts which make manifest the
revelation of who He is. And now using our God-given gifts, our lives must point
out the way to Christ to others, for this is part of that work which He has
committed to us. This is how we will do good; this is how we will do His work.
What we give to the Lord this day in our
offering to Him is greater than all the gold, frankincense or myrrh that this
world contains, for we offer the Lord our very self in our participation in
this Eucharist. However, through the Eucharist, what the Lord gives us in
return is something so much more precious than anything this world has to
offer, for He gives us His life – that life which comes from His very Heart,
the essence of who He is.
And so, this great Solemnity of the Epiphany
of the Lord is two-fold: for, in one sense, we celebrate the manifestation of
who this Christ-child is in the unfolding of salvation history. However, it is also
a celebration of our own epiphany of how we are to use the gifts God gives to
us so as to make Christ manifest in this time and space, to reveal our King,
God and Sacrifice present in our midst, most especially through Word and
Sacrament.
Ultimately, it’s about how Heaven sings “Alleluia”,
and how we upon the Earth, through the life God gives us, reply “Alleluia.” It’s
about how Jesus came to the Earth to redeem Jew and Gentile – and through that
redemption, manifest the eternal love of God . . . and to thank God that He
knows what He is all about.
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Enjoy the journey . . .
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