EPIPHANY means manifestation of
Christ to the Gentiles as
represented by the Magi. (cfr Mt 2,1-12) It means that he is meant for
all people, and not just to the Jews, the chosen people. The feast
reminds us that we all need him, for he is not only the pattern of our
humanity, but also the savior of our damaged humanity.
It can also mean, as a corollary, that everything that we
do, that is, all our human affairs, from the physical to the
technical, from the personal to the social, from the local to the
global, etc., need to be related to him, for he is the Way, the Truth
and the Life.
May this feast not only be treated as one more feast,
given some celebratory activities, but really without true and lasting
impact on our lives. It should leave us with a deeply felt hunger and
thirst for Christ, and recognizing Christ as he really is, and not
just some kind of psychological crutch or religious ornament in our
lives.
We need to deliberately stir up this hunger for Christ
that requires the impulses of our faith, the dynamics of grace and the
cooperation of our spiritual faculties, that is, our intelligence and
will, before all the other human faculties get involved.
We can be sure that on the part of God, everything is
already given so that we can have this proper hunger for Christ. Even
in the worst scenario that we can be in, God’s infinite mercy will
always be there to bring us back to him. Remember St. Paul saying:
“Where sin has abounded, grace has abounded even more.” (Rom 5,20)
Things now just depend on us, on how we react to all this
goodness of God. We simply have to reflect on this wonderful truth of
our faith, so that we can be more aware of it, and by being so, be
better motivated to act on it.
That is why we really would need to spend time knowing
Christ more by praying, studying and meditating on his word,
cultivating a certain fondness for him, having regular recourse to the
sacraments where he makes himself very available to us, etc.
We have to be wary of the many factors that tend to deaden
our appetite for Christ. We have to be properly guarded, since we can
very easily fall into an inordinate fascination for worldly pleasures,
be it food and drinks, sex, sports, etc.
That’s why Christ told us that if we want to follow him,
we need to deny ourselves and carry the cross. We have to be wary of
how we are exercising our freedom, because we have the tendency to
abuse it, using it at the impulse of our selfishness rather than
giving glory to God and loving others.
We have to learn to find Christ in all the events of life,
big and small, special and ordinary. We have to learn how relate
everything to him and not to be carried away merely by impulses of our
instincts and emotion and by those of the worldly values alone.
We have to relate everything to Christ through our faith
expressed in a working piety. This is a great challenge to all of us.
It should be something normal to all of us to feel Christ’s presence
and his providence in all things, especially in the little ordinary
events of our day. This ideal is not only for some people who we
usually regard as mystics and very special people.
We can always start by finding Christ in the little things
of our day, so that in some sense we can truly say that we are with
Christ at every moment. We need to remind ourselves that we cannot be
in the right way, we cannot find the truth about ourselves and
everything else, we cannot have true eternal life, without him.
That’s why we need to exercise our faith, more than just
depending on our senses, feelings and our common estimation of things
in general. We need to enter into the wonderful reality that Christ is
actually in us always. We are never alone actually.
We should realize that we will always need him. We can
never outgrow our need for him. In fact, the older we get, the more
knowledge and experience we gain, the more dependent we ought to be on
Christ. And that’s simply because our growth in status, knowledge and
experience will always lead us to a more complicated situations.
This is what the feast of the Epiphany should remind us of.
represented by the Magi. (cfr Mt 2,1-12) It means that he is meant for
all people, and not just to the Jews, the chosen people. The feast
reminds us that we all need him, for he is not only the pattern of our
humanity, but also the savior of our damaged humanity.
It can also mean, as a corollary, that everything that we
do, that is, all our human affairs, from the physical to the
technical, from the personal to the social, from the local to the
global, etc., need to be related to him, for he is the Way, the Truth
and the Life.
May this feast not only be treated as one more feast,
given some celebratory activities, but really without true and lasting
impact on our lives. It should leave us with a deeply felt hunger and
thirst for Christ, and recognizing Christ as he really is, and not
just some kind of psychological crutch or religious ornament in our
lives.
We need to deliberately stir up this hunger for Christ
that requires the impulses of our faith, the dynamics of grace and the
cooperation of our spiritual faculties, that is, our intelligence and
will, before all the other human faculties get involved.
We can be sure that on the part of God, everything is
already given so that we can have this proper hunger for Christ. Even
in the worst scenario that we can be in, God’s infinite mercy will
always be there to bring us back to him. Remember St. Paul saying:
“Where sin has abounded, grace has abounded even more.” (Rom 5,20)
Things now just depend on us, on how we react to all this
goodness of God. We simply have to reflect on this wonderful truth of
our faith, so that we can be more aware of it, and by being so, be
better motivated to act on it.
That is why we really would need to spend time knowing
Christ more by praying, studying and meditating on his word,
cultivating a certain fondness for him, having regular recourse to the
sacraments where he makes himself very available to us, etc.
We have to be wary of the many factors that tend to deaden
our appetite for Christ. We have to be properly guarded, since we can
very easily fall into an inordinate fascination for worldly pleasures,
be it food and drinks, sex, sports, etc.
That’s why Christ told us that if we want to follow him,
we need to deny ourselves and carry the cross. We have to be wary of
how we are exercising our freedom, because we have the tendency to
abuse it, using it at the impulse of our selfishness rather than
giving glory to God and loving others.
We have to learn to find Christ in all the events of life,
big and small, special and ordinary. We have to learn how relate
everything to him and not to be carried away merely by impulses of our
instincts and emotion and by those of the worldly values alone.
We have to relate everything to Christ through our faith
expressed in a working piety. This is a great challenge to all of us.
It should be something normal to all of us to feel Christ’s presence
and his providence in all things, especially in the little ordinary
events of our day. This ideal is not only for some people who we
usually regard as mystics and very special people.
We can always start by finding Christ in the little things
of our day, so that in some sense we can truly say that we are with
Christ at every moment. We need to remind ourselves that we cannot be
in the right way, we cannot find the truth about ourselves and
everything else, we cannot have true eternal life, without him.
That’s why we need to exercise our faith, more than just
depending on our senses, feelings and our common estimation of things
in general. We need to enter into the wonderful reality that Christ is
actually in us always. We are never alone actually.
We should realize that we will always need him. We can
never outgrow our need for him. In fact, the older we get, the more
knowledge and experience we gain, the more dependent we ought to be on
Christ. And that’s simply because our growth in status, knowledge and
experience will always lead us to a more complicated situations.
This is what the feast of the Epiphany should remind us of.
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