EPIPHANY 2012
It may come as a surprise to you – but it is with today’s feast of Epiphany that we come to the very heart of the Christmas season. Not December 25th but today gives us the reason for the season. Epiphany explains Advent and Christmas.
The word Epiphany means “to shine upon”. It means making clear and plain what had been hidden. Let me explain a little bit the way the Church understands this season and today’s feast. On Christmas there’s an explosion of light. The Eternal Word of God appears in the flesh – in a babe found in a feeding trough. Epiphany tells us what this explosion of light shines upon – what it reveals and makes clear. The Magi represent genuine seekers – seekers for the truth from every age and culture. So what does the Christmas light shine upon so that these seekers can see the truth? What basic truth or, better, what basic reality becomes clear and plain to them as they see the babe in the feeding trough?
In the words of an early church father [Peter Chrysologus] the Magi see “man in God and God in man”. The bright light of Christmas shines on human flesh – on the babe’s in the manger and also on our own human flesh. What the Christmas light makes clear is that the human – people – people like you and me – people – just people – are the means and medium through which God makes himself present. To accept the babe – to accept Jesus is also to accept that the human has become holy home for our God. All of us – people of faith and people full of doubts and unbelief – good people, bad people – friend and foe – all of us are God’s holy home.
It is only fitting then that we conclude our 25th anniversary celebration of the arrival of the Jesuits to St. Peter’s with this feast of the Epiphany. Our theme this past year has been MAGIS – a Latin word and a term much loved by Jesuits. Literally it means “more”. “ever greater”. For Jesuits it means God – God’s presence is ever greater, ever more, ever deeper than we can imagine. And that presence is in us! We bear within us God’s ever greater, ever deeper presence – the living Christ.
Our summons, our vocation as a parish is to bring forth that deeper presence – for others, to bring to bear God’s presence, God’s gracious life into every aspect and circumstance of life. We are to make God’s presence clear and plain in how we live and work together as a parish. That is how we live and do the MAGIS.
And this past year we have lived and done the MAGIS. Our banners, our hymns, prayers and liturgies, our suppers and celebrations, and, above all, our hours of service have proclaimed and shouted God has made his home among us here in this parish and here in this city of Charlotte. We have seen the living Christ here among us. We have been the living Christ here for one another – and for our city. The poor – the poor of whatever material kind or spiritual stripe – the poor have been cared for here at St. Peter’s. God’s grandeur has clearly seized us.
Let us conclude this anniversary year with an attitude St. Ignatius of Loyola recommends to all who sincerely pursue the MAGIS. That is “an attitude of gratitude.” Gratitude presumes we have recognized goodness present in our lives. And to be a grateful person – to have an attitude of gratitude – means that we allow ourselves to live habitually in the presence of goodness. As members of this parish we have every reason to take on an attitude of gratitude. God’s goodness flares out among us “like shook foil”, as Hopkins, the Jesuit poet, writes. And God’s grandeur clearly charges our life as a parish. We need only to take the time to look, to look more searchingly, more deeply at the life being lived around us. Like the Magi, we will see the star hovering and its light will make us overjoyed.
We conclude this anniversary year with Eucharist – in the Church’s great act of grateful thanksgiving for the communion we have with our God. The Lord is with us. And we at St. Peter’s are with the Lord! Thanks be to God!
Fr. Pat Earl, SJ
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