This beautiful Epiphany feast always holds a unique place for me and my family, especially when the date for it was fixed at January 6, the “Twelfth Day of Christmas.” That was my beloved mom’s birthday. Added to the fact that my mother spent her early years in the Epiphany parish located in South Philadelphia.
Now that the Epiphany is celebrated on a Sunday the date is flexible. But this was a good change, because the feast was often lost to churchgoers when it fell on a weekday. The event deserves our full attention because of its significance.
What it celebrates is captured in the very word “Epiphany” itself. It means a “manifestation” or “showing.” It is the showing of Christ Christ to the wider Gentile world beyond the world of the Jews. It implies His embrace of the same.
Up until now, we note that Christ came into the Jewish world. Both His earthly parents were good Jews, as were His grandparents and His whole extended family. St. Matthew, writing for Jewish converts to the faith, wanted to let them know that Christ came to embrace the whole world, and not just one nation.
So for today, we can meditate and learn about “the wideness of God’s mercy.” His divine plan for the salvation of the world does not involve exclusions. Still, the perennial questions arise: “Who or what is at the center of our lives? Is it really Christ Jesus or not?”
Here is a selection from the texts for today’s feast found at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in London:
The Magi
It might have been just someone else’s story;
Some chosen people get a special king,
We leave them to their own peculiar glory,
We don’t belong, it doesn’t mean a thing.
But when these three arrive they bring us with them,
Gentiles like us, their wisdom might be ours;
A steady step that finds an inner rhythm,
A pilgrim’s eye that sees beyond the stars.
They did not know his name but still they sought him
They came from otherwhere but still they found;
In palaces they found those who sold and bought him,
But in the filthy stable, hallowed ground.
Their courage gives our questing hearts a voice
To seek, to find, to worship, to rejoice.
Reading I: Isaiah 60: 1-6
The prophet announces that all parts of the world will come to Zion to rebuild Jerusalem. Then throughout land the glory of the Lord will shine forth.
Reading II: Ephesians 3: 2-3a, 5-6
Paul’s chief insight into the mystery of Christ is that Gentiles are to be recognized as full participants in the life of the Church.
The Gospel: Matthew 2: 1-12
The special personages in this episode are the magi, or wise men, who come to visit Jesus. Over time, Christianity has made them into kings, numbering them as 3 because of the number of gifts they presented to the Child. Above all, they symbolize the Gentile world coming to the Jewish Christ.