Chapter Chaplain's Homily Reflection - THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD (2021)

The Epiphany of the Lord:

THEY FELL DOWN AND WORSHIPPED JESUS

Our Christmas celebration continues today with Epiphany by turning our attention toward the world that Jesus came to save. In the Gospel Mathew sees him as “the revealed star seen at its rising by the magi who come to do him homage.” Today we come like the modern-day magi, following the light, and seeking the newborn King. While the rest of the world has already set Christmas aside and moved on to the next thing, we are here today, pondering the great news of God’s revelation of himself to humanity. On this day, we celebrate that we are part of that world and emphasize the glory of the God - man to the world.
In the Old Testament God revealed himself to the Jews through Abraham but in the New Testament he revealed himself to the Gentile Nations through the Magi from the East. In fact, God has always chosen human instruments to reveal himself as we see in the choice of these three wise men from the East. These wise-men were the professors and philosophers of their day. Today astrology has gotten a deservedly bad rap but in the beginning astrology was connected with man’s search for God and human destiny. In other words, these wise men from the East are nature worshippers, who interpreted phenomena and events by reading the movements of the stars and other heavenly bodies. God used their mode of seeing and interpreting reality to make known his glory in the Child Jesus.
So, the feast we are celebrating today is about the historic evolution of God's relationship with us at the birth of Jesus. The promise made to the people whom God called his "chosen people" is now given, revealed, shown and made manifest to the rest of the world. This made the seekers who studied the stars for an understanding of "mysteries," to be led to the mystery of a child born in a stable. They could neither have comprehended the full meaning of this discovery, nor could the child's parents have fully explained it to them without divine intervention. However, their presence as part of this story fulfills the promises of the prophets about human salvation.
One of the great news of the feast of Epiphany is that as the Lord of the universe revealed the star of Bethlehem to the Gentiles of the East to enable them to come and worship Jesus, he too can give each one of us the same light of revelation to recognize and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Like them we too need, not the light of the star but the light of the Holy Spirit to move our hearts and open the eyes of our minds to understand, accept, and believe the truth which God has revealed to us through his Son, Jesus Christ.
As we can see in the Gospel reading, the Jews who claimed an exclusive right of God and also had the Scriptures to show for it, failed to recognize that the Savior was in their midst while the Magi who followed the natural light of the stars were able to find him. To have the Bible and not walk in its light or the Sacraments and not participate fully in it, is not going to take us anywhere. With the magi, we learn that it is not the possession of the truth, like the Jews, that matters, but how prepared we are to walk in the light of the truth that we possess. In other words, we will not be saved because we possess the truth but because we live out the truth we possess. Any knowledge of God then that does not lead to his worship and adoration as the magi did is incomplete and does not have the light of life (Jn 8:12).
The good news today is that we are serving a self-revealing God. The encounter with the magi is not the first time He revealed himself to his people through diverse ways. Just as he used the magi to make known his glory in the Child Jesus, so he uses different means to reveal himself to us. The joy in this is that God still reveals himself to his people. There is always more to be known about God in spite of the many revelations committed to writing. This does not pose any surprise because God’s knowledge is unfathomable. What we already know is but little and we have the capacity to know more as we draw near to God.
So, the take home message today is that there is no one standard to measure how God reveals himself to creation. He defiled what the Jews knew about him before the birth of Jesus. He revealed himself in the Child Jesus to the shepherds who were keeping watch in the field in spite of their social stigma; he revealed himself to the magi in the East in spite of their paganism; he revealed himself to Paul the persecutor of the Church in spite of his sinfulness. He saw in them positive instruments to be used to make himself known and turned them to his glory. He can do the same with you and me. As a God whose ways are unsearchable and inscrutable (Rom 11:13), he can use crooked lines. Our prayers this New Year should be to ask God to open more our eyes to see, our hearts to love and our minds to know and serve Him unceasingly.

Chaplain 

Arrowhead Desert Valley Chapter