EPIPHANY OF THE LORD - YEAR B

EPIPHANY OF THE LORD – Year B
(Is 60:1-6; Eph 3:2-3, 5-6; Math 2:1-12)

Theme: Let us read well the signs of the times and change our way/ways

Reflection

- Centrality of the feast of Epiphany: today we celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord, that is, the self-manifestation of Jesus to all the people of the world. It is an important feast for the Church that she keeps it between two great manifestations of Jesus in the world: Jesus’ self-presentation to the world in his incarnation and Jesus’ self-sacrifice and offering of new life to the world in the paschal mystery; it is for this reason, the church proclaims today the date of ‘Easter’ and all the principle celebrations around it starting from the Ash Wednesday to the First Sunday of Advent; in this way this feast serves as the central and connecting day of the whole liturgy of the Church; it ends with the all the manifestation of the first mystery of Jesus on earth: his birth and his presentation to the whole world as the ‘boy’ born for the salvation of the humanity; and it opens the new manifestation of the second and final manifestation of Jesus on earth: his baptism, his public life and ministry and his paschal event of passion-death-resurrection and thus, as the ‘messiah’ who offered his life to obtain new beginning for all those who follow him; such is an importance of the feast we celebrate today: we close our adoration of baby Jesus and we move towards finding the adult and matured Jesus who is ready to fulfill his Father’s will and thus manifest his unconditional love on the cross.
- Celebration is perennial: Jesus’ manifestation is an ever growing and an never ending celebration; He wills to manifest himself always and everywhere there is a true need; today is the ultimate manifestation of the purpose of his ‘entrance’ into the world and his ‘indwelling’ among the people; he has already manifested himself on the day of Christmas: he manifested himself to Mary and to Joseph; he manifested himself to the shepherds in the night bringing them to himself through the message of an angel; he manifested himself to the few people of Bethlehem;
- Universal significance of the feast: Now is the time to widen and enlarge this manifestation; now is the time to make this manifestation universally significant and that all people are called to participate in this revelation; now is the time to invite all to ‘follow’ and ‘to see’ the glory of God; and this is the feast of Epiphany: the manifestation of the Lord to the Magi, means wise men, from the east; Although Jesus is born in particular time, in particular place and to the particular parents, his birth is not confined to the particular people; his birth is for all; his love is for all; his glory is for all; his joy is for all; and thus his self-manifestation is for all; to his people first and to all others next; the coming of the Magi from the distant place signify that they do not belong to the elected people of Israel but belong to the section outside the chosen race; his fragrance of love permeates the whole earth; his message of salvation embraces the whole universe; his invitation to participate in the eternal joy reaches to the ends of the earth; thus this feast has a character of universality and catholicity in our particular sense;
- Call to have great joy: the magi have found great joy when they have seen the star which was always a guide for them from their house to the savior’s house; today is the day of joy just as all the Christian celebrations are the moments of finding the true joy of the Lord; this joy is not restricted to some people alone; it crosses the boundaries of all spheres of life; it is an inner joy that the heart finds in ‘embracing’ the Lord born of us.
- understanding the signs of the time: the wise men from the east have seen the ‘strange star’ in the sky as they are also astronomers and they have immediately understood that there is something miraculous event taking place; they have so curious and they are so overwhelmed by this star that they have followed it till the end; they had made their way to the place where it has pointed them to. It has to be same with us as we celebrate this feast. God in fact provides us many ‘signs’ and ‘occasions’ to find out his interventions in our life; we have to be attentive to these ‘little’ yet ‘meaningful’ manifestations of the Lord; this is what is for us understanding the signs of his presence; once we understand what this sign/or incident or the occasion means for us we are encouraged to follow it until we reach its final realization in our life; now let us see ‘the star’ of this particular feast for us today and what it ‘shows’ to us and where it guides us.

From this particular celebration of the Feast of Epiphany we can learn at least four things in order to have the same experience of the Magi, the Wise men of the East:

First: Our desire for the Lord has dominate our knowledge of him

- Having a knowledge of the word of God and having a teaching of the scriptures thoroughly in the mind is not enough to have the experience of the Lord or to participate fully in the manifestation of the Lord but we need have desire for him and this desire is the fruit of the knowledge of the Lord; there it is not enough that we stop with knowing him but we move towards desiring because only in the desire we get him and only in the desire we become united to him and only in the desire we become part his life;
- It is this message we learn from the attitude of the Magi today: it is in contrast to the leaders and the priests of the people of Israel; King Herod and his priests have turned the pages of the scriptures, have found the prophecies about the baby-savior born in Bethlehem and thus, they acquired the full knowledge of who, where and what of the ‘king of Jews’; but they have not moved even a single ‘step’ to go and see him; they have stopped with the knowledge they got; they are happy to find out all the references of him; they are content to guiding the magi with the exact information of the birth of the king in Bethlehem; but the fate is that ‘they have not moved’ out of their houses; they are satisfied with the knowledge of his birth; they never had a ‘desire’ to see him and to meet him;
- But the attitude of the Magi is different and goes beyond that of ordinary knowledge of the priests and leaders of the locality: they too have the knowledge and they too have seen the star and they understood well what it means for them and for the world; for the world it gives the message of the new born king; and for them it gives the message of making a ‘journey’ towards him and to embrace him with all their life; once they have understood this and once they had this knowledge of the ‘king born for the Jews’ and to all they have not remained there. More than having the knowledge of it, they had desire to find out what it means and where it leads; they had the desire of becoming part of this great event in the history; they had the desire of offering their total life to the one who is born in the world and to the one which this star indicates and leads them; this is this desire that made them ‘move’ or step out from their houses and from their places; this is this desire that made them to have a long journey; though they travel for long time they are tired or they have not given it up; because the desire in them has dominated their physical fatigue and their mental knowledge; their desire to see the baby king is so great that nothing stopped them from their journey; so it is desire that goes beyond the ordinary knowledge of him;
- We are called to learn this truth that ‘our knowing of Jesus’ is not enough to participate in his manifestation and we need to have ‘the desire’ to find him and to be with him and to be for him; unless we have this desire it is difficult for us to see his light and his glory; it is this desire that will make us move out of our comfort zones: like that of our house, our family, our relations and specially, our thoughts, our ideas, our knowledge and all that what is ours; it is this desire that will makes us make a ‘journey’ towards him who is our king and savior; otherwise we remain in our houses and with our occupations and preoccupations without recognizing the ‘true life-giver’ born for us; therefore, let our knowledge of the bible or scriptures has to lead us to the desire of finding him and to the desire of having him and finally to the desire of ‘being with him’ always.

Second: we have to make ourselves ‘humble and small’ in front of the greatness of the Lord

- The Magi are not an ordinary people; according to the tradition we come to know that they are Wise men, the astronomers who read the stars and thus, in a certain sense, they are scientists; there is also another understanding of Magi that they are kings from the east and it is known with the gifts they carry to offer to the ‘strange one’, Jesus, who is born. By this we know that they are in any not small people but ‘they are already great’ in their status and in their places;
- But their attitude of making themselves ‘small’ and ‘humble’ by their leaving their royal and kingly throne and position and following a star that would lead them to the ‘wonderful event’ for the universe is noteworthy; it was in reality not necessary for them to abandon their greatness as rulers/as kings but they have still done it because they have recognized that there is born a King who is above all kings and specially, above them and their own kingdom; they have made themselves small and unworthy and in the particular manner they have so humble that they have give up their dignity and have come down to ‘glorify’ the King of kings;
- Even their gestures demonstrate this virtue of their meekness and humility: let us read once again the verse 11: “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” Let us observe keenly the important acts; first, they have entered into the house or the presence of the king born for the world; secondly, they have ‘seen’ him; thirdly, they have bowed down and adored him; fourthly, they have opened their bags; and finally, they have offered the gifts to him; each gesture is very significant;
- This is the teaching we have to learn from these wise men:
o First: let us make ourselves small and meek; we have to give up our pride and arrogance; we have to recognize that we are humans and in any way not greater than God as we always tend to be and pretend to be; we have accept our unworthiness before the great manifestation of the Lord; what are we? We are after all his creatures and the work of his hands; how can we try to dominate him or at least how can we question him and his actions; if we do not understand them let us ‘try’ at least to be ‘quite’ because we have no capacity to comprehend all the marvelous events of the Almighty for us; this is the teaching not only for us Christians but to all those who pretend to be ‘gods’ and tend to dominate the world with their knowledge and scientific experiments and with their technological enhancements; they are great things that man can do; we accept this fact that God has given the capacity and capability to the man; but it doesn’t mean that we can overtake God and take up his place; Jesus being God made himself appear in the human and much less in servant form; it is to teach us that we are small and we have to be humble before ‘appearance and action’ of God;
o Second: we have to imbibe well all the gestures that the Magi have manifested so that they could really fulfill their desire by ‘embracing’ the King of kings: we have to first of all ‘enter’ into the house of God and we do it every time we come for the mass or for the prayers; entering is not enough; we have to ‘see’/or participate in what is this small baby Jesus is doing for us right now, means, every time when we come we have to ‘observe’ well the word proclaimed for us and the Eucharist given for us; entering and seeing is not enough; we have to ‘bow down and adore him’ with all our meekness and with our smallness as the wise men of today have done it; from this act of adoration come also ‘opening’ of the self, not only the shelf, opening of the heart, not only of the eyes and this will make us ‘offer’ all that we carry from our house; we carry from our house all the troubles, all the difficulties, all the sufferings and also with them, all the hopes, all the desires to be good Christians and this is for us, the gold, the incense and the fragrance; only in this way we can ‘participate’ totally in the mysterious manifestation of the Lord;

Third: We have to leave the way we have come and take another way

- The third point we have to learn from the Magi is that we have to return to our homes and our work and to our life itself with an ‘another way’ found from the joy of meeting the baby savior; the Magi have done this and they encourage us to follow the same; let us reflect again the last verse of the gospel passage of today: “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their country by another road” (v.12). The previous verse 11 is full of gestures of Magi in their confrontations with the baby king and the present verse 12 is the decision-prepared by an angel by which they have made their return journey in a different way; and both these verses are conjunct with a word “and” which signifies that there is a close link between the first and the second and that the first one leads to the second and the second is the fruit of the first.
- The Magi were always attentive to the ‘sign’ or ‘star’: from the beginning they were following the star because they were attentive to it; now again there is God’s intervention in their decision, this time it is in the form of a ‘dream’ and yet they were attentive to heed to it; it is this attentiveness and heeding to ‘God’s sign’ which made them to save themselves and the king whom they have just embraced and adored from the furious Herod on one hand, and which made them to take a different way/another way that their return is not just like their coming but it is different because it is filled with joy of experiencing the presence of God in the world; they have changed their way; they have trodden another way; their return is quite different and joyful;
- We are invited today to ‘change’ our ways of return as those of Magi; we here into the church; we listen to the word of God; we experience joy of being in His presence; this joy should be continuous; we have to carry this joy to our homes, to our lives, to others whom we meet and to our working places; this joy has to be shared; this joy has to be reaching to other through us; for this we have to return to our homes differently; it has a spiritual meaning: we have to return from the presence of the Lord to our homes/our lives with the renewed heart and transformed life; the way we have taken to church is that of ordinary and usual one; our way to God’s presence is full of hurdles and full of doubts and full of desperation; but once we participate in the glory of God all these will be transformed into the ‘hope of joy’, ‘courage of confronting the life’ and finally ‘joy of living them’. Therefore, let us change our way; let us renew ourselves; let us leave ourselves to be transformed by God;

Fourth: We have to be ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ researchers of God

- We enter into the last point that we can learn from the Magi today; Magi as we have already noted are not the Jews; instead, they are gentiles; they are pagans; they are outside of the house of Israel, the privileged ones of God;
- But they are the ‘symbol’ for all those who search for God with sincerity and with truth: they have come all the way from their countries ‘searching’ for the one who is born to change the fate of the world; they have come from distance ‘seeking’ the true God who would be amidst his people; they have not stopped their researched; they have continued until they have found him whom they are searching in spite many doubts and many hindrances on the way;
- We have to be ‘authentic’ seekers of the truth and ‘sincere’ researchers of God: we are circled by many religions and many faith and many ideologies; we are affected by lots of doubts about the presence of God and specially about his silence towards the suffering humanity; we are attacked many a time by many who come and block our faith by creating number of doubts about the scriptures, about the church, about the failures of the priests and about the failure of Christians in giving testimony of life;
- When these attacks come from outside we are immediately shocked or disturbed; we feel as though our foundations were shaking; we tend to really cling on to them and their powerful images; specially, few religions who always find fault with the Christianity; it is normal that we are disturbed and preoccupied about the effect of these religious attacks;
- But we need not fear them; we can make these stumbling blocks as the stepping stone for climbing upwards in our authentic research for the truth; they give us possibility to deeper our own faith and to deepen our seeking; they are the occasions for us to question our stand as Christians and to grow in the firm faith; they are the doors for us through which we enter into the reality of ‘true and authentic’ faith that will sustain us; we have to learn to treat them with respect, not with fear;
- The Wise men of today’s reflection are our models and examples; they have never given up their research and their seeking; instead, they have made even the chosen people to recognize and to realize who this baby is and for whom he is born; if we sincerely seek the truth we do not give up until we find it; and seeking the truth is a process and we are still in the process; we know the Jesus is born for us and we have accepted him as our savior but as Christians; still we do not have answers for all the problems of the world; but our trial is always is there; our research is always there; the world’s technology and science and the other religious pressures give us the possibility and encourage us to ‘continue firmly’ in our seeking the truth and in growing in faith; let us learn to be sincere seekers of God;

Conclusion: You/I are the star of the world

- Jesus is the star of God’s love to the world; he is the light of the world as he himself manifested in his proclamation; he is the light that has shown on the people who are walking in the darkness; he is the true light in which we see ourselves clearly and thus take part in his ‘heavenly splendor’;
- Church is the star of Jesus in the world and for the world; the church leads all men to the truth by its interpretation of the scriptures and by its proclamation and theological explorations of the truth: Jesus Christ - the Truth, the Way and the Life;
- Each Christian is the star to the others; we have to shine in our life first with the joy and glory of God and thus we have the responsibility of throwing this light on others; we have to guide the world now; for this we have to ‘deepen our own life and faith’.
- Today and Now, You are the star and we always have this vocation of being the star; and you have to guide yourself, your family, your work and your life to the manifestation of Jesus;
- For all these, let us remind ourselves, let us first understand well the signs of the God’s presence and doing in our lives and change our way/ways with the renewed heart and transformed spirit and be the ‘true seekers’ of God.