Homily for Sunday, 8 January 2023– The Epiphany of the Lord

Readings of the day: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

Imagine that you could travel to anywhere in the world you wanted. Where would you go?

I lived in Paris, “the City of Light,” for over five years while completing a doctorate, so I would put Paris at the top of my list of recommended destinations. As a Basilian priest, I have been blessed to have served in or visited all five countries in which my order serves: In France, the place of our founding in 1822, Annonay, “Historic City of the Hot Air Balloon,” and Paris. In Canada, I have lived in Toronto, “Hogtown, Hollywood or Broadway North, Queen City, TO, The Six,” and in Windsor, “Automotive Capital of Canada.” I have visited Basilian communities in Mexico: Tehuacán, “Place of Gods” and Mexico City, “City of Palaces.” I have served in the United States, in Irondequoit, New York, “A Town for a Lifetime,” which is a suburb of Rochester, “The Flower City.” And I have served in Colombia: In Cali, “A Branch of Heaven,” Santa Marta, “America’s Pearl,” Medellín, “The Eternal Spring,” and Bogotá, “2 600 Metres Closer to the Heavens” because of its altitude above sea level.

For over two years now already, I am happily settled back in Edmonton, “City of Champions,” the city where I was born and grew up. Edmonton’s nickname is not derived from some of the greatest professional sports teams ever assembled, especially in the 1980s, but from its recovery after the “Black Friday” tornado of 1987. *It always brings me great joy to return here to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, to this faith community, my home parish from when I was twelve years old until my early twenties. Now, Sherwood Park does not have a claim to fame or a showy nickname or motto. We could call it, “The Park,” or “The World’s Largest Hamlet: Guinness Book World Record Holder.” No, maybe it is better to be humble, without a nickname, a motto, or international fame.*

If there is one place in the world I have yet to visit where I would like to go, it might be Rome, The Eternal City, with Vatican City, the centre of the Catholic Church. I still have never been there. I have been to Bethlehem, where our Gospel today says a very important event took place. Bethlehem was the destination of a pilgrimage of magi or “wise men from the East,” who followed a star to a humble manger where the newborn Jesus, the Saviour of the world, lay.

Bethlehem, by its Hebrew name, is “the house of bread.” It was the birthplace of the biblical King David. But, whether in King David’s time, or Jesus’ time, or our time, Bethlehem has never been a very important city on the world stage. To this day Bethlehem is really a large town, a suburb overshadowed by nearby Jerusalem.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear today that even the wise men stopped in Jerusalem first, at Herod’s palace, on their way to Bethlehem. Herod and his line of kings had built the temple of Jerusalem, the centre of the Jewish faith at the time, into a structure larger and showier that it had ever been. Bethlehem was… just… little, by comparison to Jerusalem.

I doubt the wise men would have considered Bethlehem a top destination to visit. Could we imagine them showing up at the local camel rental agency one day?

— Yes, we will need as many camels as there are of us, with unlimited mileage; destination is Bethlehem, round trip, following a star.

— “So, three camels,” the camel rental agent asks, “Right”?

— Well, there are three gifts: Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. There may be more or fewer than three joining us on the trip. Can we add an extra driver on the largest camel, just in case?

— Sure, no problem. But you do realize how long a trip Bethlehem is from here by camel, right? And are all of you aged 25 or over? If not, those camels will require extra insurance.

— Yes, all of us are over 25. And we’ve worked out in our GPS the distance to Bethlehem. We considered flying, but, oh, the baggage fees for all the gold, frankincense, and myrrh we’re carrying… We’ll be fine, but one of our vehicles will need to be a sport utility camel, with extra luggage room. We have no budget limit; we’re astrologer-kings, so more than willing to spend good money on reliable camels.

— Okay, no problem at all. That will be ten shekels, taxes included. Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, I’ll just need your signatures at the bottom of the papyrus, and your initials where I’ve highlighted. And if Bob the fourth wise man decides to join you, an extra camel is free of charge. Have a great trip!

— That’s so generous of you! Thank you so much!

Bethlehem probably was not the top of the wise men’s list of destinations. But, for astrologers, people who followed the stars for a living, this pilgrimage would be once-in-a-lifetime. And, besides, a prophet had written years before that the wise men would encounter a certain Messiah had been born in little Bethlehem: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Why astrologers from the East who were almost certainly not Jewish Israelites would fulfill a prophecy of ancient Israel (Micah, in this case) is a mystery. But it was not the first time, nor would it be the last, when people would set out to travel off the beaten track.

Toward the end of the Book of Isaiah—the part of Isaiah from which we have just heard—the prophet is trying to convince an entire people to travel off the beaten track. This part of Isaiah is about the time when the people of Israel had been in exile in Babylon for around seventy years (many generations). Isaiah tries to convince them to return home, because a new power, Persia, has conquered Babylon and has decreed that the Israelites may return home. But Israel lay in ruins, its first temple (before Herod rebuilt it, centuries later) destroyed. Isaiah convinces a small fraction of the people in exile in Babylon to return and rebuild their homeland. But this small remnant of Israel is just enough to save Israel as a nation.

Yet Isaiah does more than to convince this faithful remnant to return home. Isaiah preaches that Israel will draw peoples of other nations to itself: “Nations shall come to your light, [bringing] gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.”

Matthew interprets this prophecy from Isaiah in light of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ. The “wise men from the East,” following a star to the cradle of the infant Messiah in little Bethlehem, represent for Matthew “the nations”—all the non-Jewish, non-Israelite peoples of the world, who were and still are most of the inhabitants of the world—who would “come to [God’s] light,” to God’s Messiah, God made flesh.

Only by setting out off the beaten track, toward a nation in need of rebuilding, would a remnant of the people of Israel in Isaiah’s time not only be able to rebuild Israel’s ruins, but they would be able to welcome the rich gifts of the nations of the world. And, in turn, Israel’s God, our God, would be revealed in glory and truth to those other nations.

The same thing happens with the magi in Matthew’s Gospel: They are bold enough to set out, off the beaten track. They are momentarily sidetracked in Jerusalem by the evil Herod. They return home from Bethlehem “by another road” to avoid Herod. But only by being bold enough to travel beyond the conventional—not to a top destination, or even to a place of comfort—do the “wise men from the East,” who represent “the nations” (all of us, sisters and brothers), encounter our God in human flesh. Only so are they “overwhelmed with joy.” Only so is God in turn revealed or made known to all the nations on Earth.

Epiphany, the name of today’s celebration, is a Greek word that means making known. So, ideally, God is made known to those who set out off well-traveled paths, not to top destinations. Will this change our travel plans, sisters and brothers? Will this make us more like the wise men in Matthew’s Gospel or the remnant of Israel who returned home to rebuild their nation? To encounter God-made-flesh, might we need to travel to such hot destinations as deliberate kindness, as reconciliation especially with people we may find troublesome, whom we have hurt or who have hurt or sinned against us? Might we need to go to places like attentive listening, prayer, generosity with the goods of the Earth with which we have been blessed? Those are some of our Bethlehems today.

These may not be (at least at first) places of utmost comfort, but they are the places, the words, the actions by which we will encounter God. We will be “overwhelmed with joy.” And from there we will be able to make God known, in glory and truth, to all the nations and peoples of the Earth.

---

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, and St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada. The OLPH version of its text, in Paragraph 3, is above, marked with asterisks (*). Here is the version of the text for St. Joseph's College:

It always brings me great joy to serve here at St. Joseph’s College, where what is true, right, and beautiful is faithfully taught, studied, and lived, according to this place’s motto, Quæcumque vera doce me: “Teach me whatsoever things are true.”

Homily for Sunday, 2 January 2022– The Epiphany of the Lord

Readings of the day: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

This is maybe no more than simple coincidence, but it seems to me that, over the last few years, at around this time of year, space exploration has been in the news. Three years ago, on January 1, 2019, the New Horizons space probe made a fly-by of a small, snowman-shaped object in the Kuiper Belt, outside the orbit of Neptune. This object was eventually named Arrokoth after the word for “cloud” in the Powhatan language once spoken by the Indigenous people of the area around Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, where Arrokoth was discovered. Arrokoth became the farthest object from Earth ever visited by a spacecraft.

And then, just a few days ago, on Christmas Day 2021, we may have heard news of the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. The James Webb Space Telescope will be able to observe deeper into space and farther into the infrared light spectrum (invisible to the human eye) than the famous Hubble Space Telescope, which discovered Arrokoth.

I think we can say that there is a natural human fascination with what is beyond our Earth: The heavens; the stars; the universe’s age and continuous expansion; or even whether there is intelligent life beyond Earth. And our fascination with this beyond pre-dates even the first, most rudimentary scientific instruments to aid our space observation, never mind Hubble or the James Webb telescopes. Our fascination with the beyond dates back to ancient times.

Our Gospel account of the Epiphany of our Lord Jesus and the main figures in this event is familiar to us. Matthew’s Gospel presents us with magi or “wise men from the East” who were drawn to Bethlehem by a star to pay homage to the newborn Messiah, Jesus. We know little about these “wise men from the East,” from Matthew or any other source, besides the gifts they brought to honour Jesus, and that they returned from honouring Jesus “to their own country by another road” to avoid the ill-intentioned Herod. The meaning of the gifts of the magi has been the focus of theological reflection: Gold is most often the gift for somebody royal, so the magi reveal the newborn Jesus as somehow a king. Frankincense is associated with prayer—incense, with its pleasing smell, rises to heaven; to God—so the magi reveal this child as somehow God. And myrrh is a burial spice, so the magi reveal Jesus as one who, although he is God and a king, has submitted himself to every aspect of our humanity, including our experiences of suffering and death.

I use the word “reveal”—by their gifts the magi reveal the newborn Jesus to our world as a king, as God, and as the one who will die to save us—because this is what our celebration today is about: Epiphany is a Greek word that means “making known” or “revelation.”

This Epiphany; this revelation of our God born into our world as fully human is to all peoples and nations. This Epiphany we celebrate is truly universal. But it begins with these “wise men from the East.” Who were these “wise men from the East”? Were they, as some have speculated, Zoroastrian astrologers from Persia who drew spiritual meaning from the movements of the stars? Were there three wise men—something about which Matthew’s Gospel is not clear; Matthew only says that they brought three gifts? All of this is hard to say.

We know about these “wise men from the East,” though, that something—a star—drew their attention toward the west. We know that the Epiphany of our Lord to all peoples; all nations; to the universe God created began with a very simple, yet profound act: These “wise men from the East” looked up. They looked up at the heavens with some kind of awe. And their awe, whether at the beauty of the heavens or the unusual appearance of that star to the west, led them to set off from their homeland. Their awe led them to set off toward a land that may well have been unknown to them.

The awe of these “wise men from the East”; their simple act of looking up, led them to discern that some event had taken place that had changed the world. Somehow, in the course of their journey, they discerned that a child had been born, one who was being called “king of the Jews.” Who had told them this, somewhere between their homeland and Jerusalem? And why were the magi interested in a Jewish baby, since they were probably not Jews? How did they know what gifts to bring the newborn Jesus, or the meaning of these gifts? Again, all this is hard to say.

But, most vital to the encounter the magi would have with the Christ child; most vital to the revelation of Jesus of Nazareth to the whole created universe as fully God and fully human (fully inscribed in God’s creation; his divinity clothed in created matter), is the starting point of this Epiphany encounter: The magi looked up with awe.

When was the last time we looked up; when we looked beyond ourselves with simple, profound awe? Maybe I have an advantage (at least I think I do, and I thank God for this) over many people, with some background in biology and a lively interest in the sciences; in any case my interest in science and what this means for us as people of faith leads me to look up and outward with awe almost constantly. God has created for us truly a beautiful world; a beautiful universe. And I am in awe, constantly, that our God (at least the God in whom I believe and I think our Catholic Church believes, most fundamentally) would create for us a world at the same time intelligible to our human senses and minds, but that would push us to want to discover more of what we still do not know.

In our time, we have sophisticated scientific instruments, like infrared telescopes, to help in our discovery of what we still do not know about our universe. We have the gift of hindsight: Of past events; past scientific observations affirmed as fact (or nearly) by repeatedly producing the same results. We have the gift of hindsight that the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in Bethlehem is now over two thousand years past. Even Matthew’s Gospel today interprets the events of the Lord’s Epiphany based on hindsight. Matthew interprets these events based on Israel’s prophets who lived before him: “For so it has been written by the Prophet [in this case Micah]: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means the least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”

We can be fairly sure that Israel’s prophets themselves relied on hindsight; on previous experience of Israel’s relationship with God. Micah’s prophecy that Matthew’s Gospel interprets in light of the Epiphany of our Lord (again, I think we can be sure) did not originally foresee God entering our world as a human baby in Bethlehem a few centuries after the prophet’s lifetime. Micah, like all Israel’s prophets, was interpreting events of his present in light of Israel’s past relationship with God. Even Isaiah, in the reading we hear today, interprets his and Israel’s present in light of God’s past relationship with God’s people. Israel of Biblical times was almost persistently in turmoil; in exile; under occupation. The prophets strove to remind Israel that they had (perhaps miraculously) survived as God’s people; as a nation to that point in history, and that whatever affliction they were facing would pass, if they trusted in God. This is why Isaiah is able to remind his people in past tense, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you”!

Once again, St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, had and used his gift of hindsight. “The mystery” of God made human, St. Paul says, “was made known to me by revelation.” St. Paul is able to interpret, from this past revelation—a past Epiphany—that God was in the process of revealing something new; something still more universal: “The Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body” of Christ, through God becoming human in the person of Jesus.

St. Paul, like Isaiah, Micah, and all Israel’s prophets; like Matthew and all the Gospels, invite us to make use of our gift of hindsight. It, too, is from God: The gift of discerning the hand of God in past events and applying this discernment to our present. But this hindsight; this discernment must lead us to something more. If it does not, our hindsight can be misused. Hindsight alone can close us in on ourselves. Hindsight alone can lead us to dwell on our experiences of evil; our experiences of suffering; our experiences that can lead us to doubt God’s hand in the creation and sustenance of our universe; our world and all things; all life in it. With hindsight alone, we could never set out, as the “wise men from the East” did, to encounter God’s Epiphanies that change our world; that are saving and will save our world.

What must act along with hindsight? In a word, awe: This must act along with the gift of hindsight. With awe, then, may we look up and out beyond ourselves. May we bring not perhaps the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to greet our newborn God, King, and Saviour; but may we simply and profoundly bring our gifts of awe and thanksgiving to God for God’s creation and sustenance of creation; of us. As the magi did, we lay before our God revealed to our universe as one like us our gifts of awe and thanksgiving. And we return from this encounter with our God in human flesh—this universal Epiphany we celebrate today—with overwhelming joy.

Homily for Sunday, 5 January 2020– The Epiphany of the Lord

Readings of the day: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

This homily was given at St. James and Our Lady of the Valley Churches, Vernon, BC, Canada.

This solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, that is, the “making known” of Jesus to the world brings us each year the Gospel account, unique to Matthew’s Gospel, of the visit to Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem of the wise men or magi. The story of the magi is familiar to us: Guided by a star, the magi journey from their home country to the east of Israel to Bethlehem. They bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

But what does this visit of the wise men to the scene of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem mean for us today? I am especially drawn to a homily by Pope Francis of a couple of years ago in which the pope points to three key actions of the magi that make these wise men from the East relatable to us; an example to us in our lives of faith in a special way. First, the wise men follow a star to the Nativity scene in Bethlehem; second, they set out from their home country; and, third, they bring gifts.

When the magi arrive in Jerusalem, they know already that a life-changing event, the birth of a child, has taken place. The magi ask: “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we have observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” Is this not already a bit unusual that the magi would ask about a child “born king of the Jews” in the first place? For the most part, scholars consider Matthew’s description of the wise men as “from the East” to mean that they were neither Jewish nor Roman, but possibly Zoroastrians, a people who considered changes in the movements of the stars as signs of the divine.

The spirituality; the religion of these wise men centered on looking toward the heavens. But another strange detail, at least according to astronomers who study what the sky might have looked like at specific points in history, is that the star the wise men saw around the time of Jesus’ birth probably was not too bright a star, nothing far out of the ordinary. The magi may have had to have quite the discerning eye to detect as subtle a change in the night sky, this “star at its rising” that would guide them to Bethlehem, a village as near-ordinary as the star they saw; Bethlehem, the ordinary village God chose in which to enter our world as one like us.

The magi saw and followed this star. Yet how many of us have ever done exactly what these “wise men from the East” did; how many of us have ever simply looked up at the sky? During the day, our sun gives us just enough light and warmth to provide life on this planet. But even the sun is fairly ordinary insofar as stars go. As one who is not specialized in what to look for when I look at the night sky—I may be able to find a few major constellations—I doubt I would have the discerning eye that the wise men of Jesus’ time must have had. Sure, from my Boy Scout days I would be able to find Polaris, the North Star at the end of the Little Dipper, Ursa Minor, to point myself straight north. Lately the planet Venus has been near the brightest it ever appears to us, so it is especially easy to spot. We speak of full moons, blue moons, blood moons, and hunter’s moons, meteor showers at their most intense in August and November... If I am especially fascinated or looking for a specific star in the sky, I have an application on my phone called SkyTracker Lite.

But, in the days of the magi, there was no app for that. The wise men simply looked up. When have we looked up and, even if we have had no idea what to look for that might be out of the ordinary, simply been in awe? Have any of us ever peered into those almost fourteen billion light years of space and simply thought, “Wow! What kind of being—whom we call God—could create such magnificence”?

We, like the magi of Jesus’ time, look up and, if looking up gives us a sense of awe, then this awe sets us on a journey. Have we ever looked up and been in awe at the expanse of the universe and then, with eyes of faith, deepened our wonder at how the creator of all that expanse could, or would want to, be born into our world as one like us, and would want to show himself first to “wise men from the East” who simply began by following a star; by doing what they were used to doing, looking up to the heavens for signs of the divine; being in awe even at a subtle change in that sky?

From that first feeling of awe at looking up and seeing a star, the wise men set out from their home country. Why? Were these wise men not  perhaps wealthy, or at least comfortable with their way of life in their own country? What would cause them to set out for a land unknown to them? How were they able to encounter Herod in Jerusalem and then, on their return home, to heed the warning “in a dream not to return to Herod”? For Herod, in our Gospel, represents the exact opposite of the wise men. Herod greets the news of this child born in Bethlehem with fear that leads him to act with great evil. Herod, wealthy and comfortable, was unwilling to set out from his comfort zone, whereas the wise men were. And the wise men, upon arriving at the place of the Lord’s birth, “were overwhelmed with joy” at what must still have been to them a challenge to their comfort; to their old way of life.

Still, for the wise men to go beyond their comfort was their only way to utmost joy. The magi show us that the measure by which we are willing to set out from our comfort, from “this is the way we have always done it,” from our wealth if we have it, is the measure by which we will experience joy. It is the measure by which, in place of worldly comfort, wealth, and the way of life we know, our God is born among and within us. Our God lives among and within us in a way that, as I imagine it was for the wise men and certainly for the likes of Herod, was unnerving. But there can be no greater joy for us than this: God taking our human form and dwelling among us; God, beginning as a baby in Bethlehem, breaking down our comfort zones to take the place of greatest importance in our hearts, minds, and actions.

Yet if we are able to get so far as to look up and allow ourselves to be overtaken by awe, and then to let that awe impel us to set forth beyond our comfort, our wealth, our best-laid plans, or our existing way of life, still then, like the wise men, we are called to bring gifts.

The magi of Matthew’s Gospel brought three gifts to the newborn Jesus: Gold fit for a king; frankincense fit for God; and myrrh for the one who would die and rise to save us. What gifts will we bring to honour our king; to honour our Lord and God; to honour the one who has died and risen and will return at the end of time to save us; to bring us eternal life?

Might we begin by offering the gift of our worship, our presence in celebration here and now? We worship and we celebrate as the gifts God has already offered us, gifts of simple bread and wine, are changed and change us into the gift of Christ to our world. This urges us, then, to go forth from this celebration bearing intentional gifts of love and kindness especially toward the most abandoned, the most disadvantaged and vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: People not yet born; people of an advanced age; people who have few or no loved ones to care for them; people who are sick in mind, body, or spirit; people who are dying; people who flee violence, poverty, and persecution in their homelands for the safety of our country, and so on.

The gifts of love and kindness we bear especially to people who cannot repay us show to the world that we are, like the “wise men from the East” of Jesus’ time, a people who looks up and out at God’s world, God’s universe, with awe; that this awe impels us to set forth from our comfort, our best-laid plans, our wealth, into the unknown and the challenging.

We bring gifts freely because we have been given a gift, God’s own Son. This gift we have received and hand on, freely and without charge, is the gift that alone will overwhelm our world with joy because ours is the gift—the Epiphany, the “making known” of God’s dwelling among and within us—that we celebrate here and that will lead us to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 7 January 2018– The Epiphany of the Lord

Readings of the day: Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

What is the Epiphany, the feast we celebrate today? Growing up, the Epiphany always had the feel of the end of something. Practically, the Epiphany marked the end of the Christmas season. (In the Church, officially, Christmastime ends with the Baptism of the Lord, which we celebrate tomorrow). The Epiphany was the “best before date” of the Christmas tree. Decorations were taken down and put into storage for another year. Family and friends who had visited over Christmastime had gone home; back to work or school; back to their regular, everyday lives. The seemingly endless supply of turkey sandwiches made from Christmas and New Year leftovers had finally dwindled. Christmas carols would no longer be sung or played after the Epiphany. And, on the Epiphany, our three wise men figurines would at long last complete their exhausting journey across the living room to the Nativity scene… Of course, we might imagine, the real journey of the wise men, of which we hear in today’s Gospel and of which our Nativity scene figurines remind us, was truly exhausting, even if they did travel with joy to meet our Saviour!

Even in the Church, the Epiphany has the feel of an ending; a destination. In fact this, I would say, is the purpose of every Mass; every time we gather to worship in this place, not only the Epiphany. Like the wise men in Matthew’s Gospel, we bring gifts. We bring ourselves here to adore the Christ, our Lord; “to pay him homage.” And yet what if I were to say that, while the Epiphany, like every time we gather here to worship, is a kind of destination, it is also a beginning?

After all, what is an “epiphany”? “Epiphany” is originally a Greek word that means “showing forth” or “making known.” And so who is made known on the Epiphany? Of course, God is made known; Jesus Christ, God made human, is made known on his Epiphany.

Our readings today are clear that this celebration of the Epiphany is God’s Epiphany; God’s being “made known” to and in our world. St. Paul uses the language of making known word for word in his letter to the Ephesians from which we hear today. The message St. Paul proclaims, that of his “commission of” and ongoing encounter with “God’s grace,” is a message centered on an ongoing epiphany over time. Through St. Paul’s letters, our Gospels, our Bible— Old and New Testaments— God’s Epiphany has been made timeless. And God continues to be made known to us today.

God’s Epiphany, God’s making himself known to our world, began from the moment God breathed his spirit over the deep and said, “‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” God’s Epiphany continued through the Law of Moses and the prophets, the “revelation” to which St. Paul refers in his letter to the Ephesians. God has been made known to us in full as Jesus Christ, God’s Epiphany in human form. And God’s Epiphany, this process of eternity being made known to us in and over time, will be completed at the end of time when Jesus Christ returns in glory.

Is it not remarkable, though, that in all this process of epiphany, God does not make himself known as an obviously powerful ruler? In fact the only earthly ruler involved in this Epiphany event as Matthew presents it is the weak and fearful Herod. No, among the first people to experience this high point of God’s Epiphany, the birth of our Messiah, Jesus Christ, are magi from the East, probably astrologers, who looked to the stars for signs of the divine. They are outsiders; non-Jews from another land. They do not even belong to Jesus’ own people.

Yet God includes these magi among the first to witness his greatest Epiphany, the Lord and Saviour of the universe God created and blessed, the stars to which the magi looked. God meets these magi where they are. And from there God guides the magi to the Messiah by a star, the best way these magi knew to encounter God.

God guides the magi from the truth they know, the presence of God in the created universe, already a kind of epiphany or God’s “making known,” to a still greater Truth. The God of almost fourteen billion majestic light years (and counting) of visible universe now makes himself known to magi as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem!

God encounters these “wise men from the East,” searchers for God in the stars, and guides them by a star to where God is made known to the world as a human infant in a manger. God guides these magi from truth to Truth; from epiphany to Epiphany. The magi arrive with their “gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” to adore the newborn Messiah. Matthew says that “when they saw that the star had stopped, the magi were overwhelmed with joy.” In their great joy, “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod”— because true joy never denies the sin of the world that Herod represents, nor will the sin of the world ever extinguish our joy in God made known to us— the magi return “to their own country.”

It is at this point, where Matthew’s Gospel leaves off today, when the work of the magi is only beginning. Back in “their own country,” we might imagine, the magi will be entrusted with proclaiming the Epiphany, God of the heavens made known as a human infant in a manger, to their own people. And the same is true of us. Our work of Christmas; our work of being God’s Epiphany, of making God known in our world, begins ever-anew, here and now.

We are, in a sense, the magi of our time, whom God is leading from truth to Truth, to make God known in our world, to bring with us the gift of our presence; our worship; our joy; our works of justice and peace to pay homage to our Messiah. After this Eucharistic celebration, we will return to our homes. In the Church, we will return to Ordinary Time; to keeping time until Christ returns in glory. Our friends and extended family members may have returned to their homes, too. Decorations have been stored for another year. Christmas trees have been taken down. But we, like the magi, are not at the end but at the beginning of a journey, on the cusp of an epiphany, because we are God’s Epiphany to our world today.

How is this so? Howard Thurman, an African American theologian and civil rights leader in the United States in the 1960s, wrote a poem entitled, “When the Song of the Angels is Stilled” to remind us of how we are to make God known to our world by our striving for social justice. Our work for justice only begins with our Christmas and Epiphany celebrations, Thurman once said, “When the song of angels is stilled.”

A few days ago, a Sister of St. Joseph who taught a course on Catholic Social Teaching I took in seminary in Toronto shared an adaptation of Thurman’s poem, written by Michael Dougherty, co-chair of the Social Justice Committee at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Whitehorse. (Dougherty’s reflection is in the next-to-most-recent edition of the Prairie Messenger, for anybody who wants to find it and pray over it.) Dougherty writes:

When the carols have been stilled,

when the star-topped tree is taken down,

when family and friends are gone home,

when we are back to our schedules,

the work of Christmas begins:

To welcome the refugee,

to heal a broken planet,

to feed the hungry,

to build bridges of trust, not walls of fear,

to share our gifts,

to seek justice and peace for all people,

to bring his light to the world.

My sisters and brothers, these are ways in which we might be like the magi to our time; to our world. Our “work of Christmas”; our work of bringing God’s Epiphany to our “own country”; to our world, making the light of Christ, our God, known in our world and in our time, now begins.