A not long time ago, we celebrated the feast of Epiphany. Even though we usually link the Solemnity with the arrival of the Three Magi to Jesus’ place in order to pay homage to Him, the Church in Her Tradition has included two more events of Christ’s life into the celebration of Epiphany in its proper theological sense.
The Greek word epiphaneia means “an appearing,” “appearance,” “manifestation.” Two events described in the Gospel passages for the two Sundays following the Feast of Epiphany highlight the fact of Christ’s manifesting Himself to humanity as God. Two weeks ago, we heard about the Three Magi. Last week, we heard about Christ’s baptism and the Father’s voice presenting Jesus as His beloved Son. Today, we hear about Jesus performing His first miracle at the wedding. The passage ends with the sentence saying that “He let his glory be seen, and his disciples believed in Him” (John 2:11). Like in the previous two passages, we see Christ’s appearance to the world in this event. His glory is in the centre, yet not less important is the purpose of God revealing His glory – so they can believe in Him. Many evangelical stories have common features of God taking the first step to reveal Himself and a human taking a step of faith as a response. This fact gives our faith a relational perspective rather than just theoretical. Believing in the Lord is not merely believing in the content of a book, like one can believe in some philosophical system. Faith is founded in a relational reality of God coming to us and revealing Himself in the Bible (particularly in the three Epiphanical events), Tradition of the Church, and finally in our personal relationship with Him. In this way, the feast of Epiphany becomes our very personal feast – a feast of God being present to us in His action.
Let this Sunday be an occasion to meditate on those events in our lives when we have experienced God’s appearing presence. Perhaps it was an unexpected event, like for those attending the wedding at Cana. Maybe rather the opposite, like John the Baptist, we had expected to experience God’s power, and He listened to our prayer acting in our lives very clearly like it was a case during Christ’s baptism. Or, like the Magi, we experienced God’s presence in our lives differently than we had expected – like Magi coming to the newborn King of Israel, first heading for the King’s Palace in Jerusalem, and ending up in the humble place where the Holy Family had their shelter.
Łukasz Gołąb – Seminary of the Good Shepherd, Sydney, Australia
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