The Epiphany 2022

 

 The Epiphany                                                                                                   (Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12)

 

It is commonly thought that the technical terminology of some Church documents and theological writings is not only devoid of meaning for ordinary Catholics, but also conducive to their spiritual aridity.  And yet, because that terminology has been finely tuned over many, many centuries, by some of the greatest minds and the deepest hearts among the disciples of Christ, it expresses, most subtly, beautiful truths about God.  Those well-honed and beautifully polished truths are well able to kindle ardent flames of heavenly love and glowing words of divine praise from faithful men and women still to be found who, in even these most modern times, are able to quieten their multitudinous thoughts and distractions long enough for them to dispassionately listen to, thoughtfully appreciate, and, gradually and most gratefully, learn to love, the teaching of Mother Church.

Our God is unique and transcendent in all perfections, such is the teaching of both Christian philosophy and Catholic dogma: He cannot be contained within any limits because He is infinite: He is the Almighty, the All Holy, whose sovereign Power sublimely expresses His incomparable Wisdom and sustains His supreme Goodness. 

In line with such appreciations of God we find in the Gospel reading today that the Magi first became aware of the proximate birth of the Christ through the appearance of an extraordinarily bright star in the heavens.  They set out to follow its lead bearing incense for the heavenly and most holy Being announced by this phenomenon, and their scholarly expectations and spiritual appreciation of the Child they were seeking were to be confirmed by a chorus of angels singing to Bethlehem shepherds of humbler degree:

            Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. 

The Magi expected to find the One they were seeking among the highest on earth in Jerusalem, the city where the great God of Israel had chosen to dwell, and at the court of him who was the present Rome-favoured king of this Chosen People and builder of the Temple which was one of the wonders of the Roman world.  In line with this expectancy, they had also brought with them a second gift: royal gold.

The Magi were well received by Israel’s king -- Herod was his name -- and he, after having summoned and enquired of his most learned priests and sages, encouraged the Magi in their search for the Child with an oracle taken from the age-old Jewish scriptures:

You, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you shall come a Ruler Who will shepherd My people Israel.

The Magi therefore confidently proceeded in their search for the Child by continuing to follow the heavenly star of great beauty in accordance with the ancient oracle and royal encouragement given them in the holy city of Jerusalem where the One to come was foreknown and, it would seem, reverently desired and eagerly expected.

However, since no limits can be set to God’s perfections, although He is indeed limitlessly great in majesty, He is also limitlessly lowly in humility.  Therefore, when the Magi eventually arrived at the spot over which the star itself seemed to have stopped, they saw, to their surprise, that it was nothing more than a cattle shelter containing a manger, in which:

They saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him.

This was not what they had expected to find, and yet, taking up and offering their gifts, they found them wonderfully providential: frankincense for the holy, and gold for the great, but also myrrh for the weak who need to be embalmed in death, and for the lowly and rejected who need to be succoured and comforted in their pain:

Nicodemus took the body of Jesus, and bound It in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. (John 19:39-40)

They brought Jesus to the place Golgotha, which is translated, Place of a Skull.  Then they gave Him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, but He did not take it; and then they crucified Him.  (Mark 15:22-24)

People of God, today we celebrate the Epiphany, the manifestation of something of the glory and majesty of Jesus.  However, I hope that, having come to some appreciation of the technical terminology used in the Church’s teaching at times, you are now aware that the glory and the power, the majesty and the beauty, of Jesus in His perfect humanity, in no way excludes you, because those perfections extend, so to speak, down as well as up: as God He is the greatest, but He can also make Himself the least; supremely majestic, and yet there is none so humble.  In the Eucharist here at Mass, as man He offers Himself to be our food, and yet on every hand as God He supports the whole of creation and is worshiped by myriads of angels in heaven; He now reigns in majesty and bliss and yet none suffers what He Himself has not experienced, what He is not willing to compassionately share and spiritually succour now.  In His omnipotent power, He is the first and the last, the beginning and the end of all things; in His wisdom He pervades the heights and the depths, He surveys all times and seasons, past, present, and to come, and, above all, He knows our minds and hearts in all their twists and turns wherein even we ourselves can be at a loss. All this He can do because of His great love, the love whereby He originally made us in His own likeness, the love whereby He remade us when He sacrificed His only-begotten Son for our salvation, and endowed us with His own most Holy Spirit.

People of God, let us understand aright the essence of this divine celebration and manifestation which is the Epiphany; our God is unique, infinite, and transcendent, in His perfections; and yet all His perfections are able to be summed up by these three words of St. John: GOD IS LOVE.  Words which we alone on earth can appreciate.

For those still daunted and somewhat put-off by the scholarship required for the doctrinal expression and defence of God-given truth as well as its theological understanding and development, let love -- rightly appreciated and understood -- explain all: because the mutual embrace of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is LIFE ETERNAL, which supports the total grandeur of cosmic creation, all life and being here on earth, the heavenly powers, and which, above all -- through Jesus born of Mary -- inspires all beautiful human love, spiritual  aspirations, heavenly hopes, experience, and expectations.

Divine love alone embraces all that Mother Church teaches, all that the Scriptures contain, and all that the human mind can learn from Jesus and -- under the gift and grace of His most Holy Spirit – all that we can become, for the glory of Him Who is the God and Father of us all.        

2nd Sunday after Christmas year C 2022

 

 2^nd. Sunday after Christmas (C)                       

(Ecclesiasticus 24:1-2, 8-12; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-18; John 1:1-18)

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Let us recall the Christmas message as we heard it told us by St. John:

God Himself, in the Person of God the Son, became a human being, to the extent that, in that Man, the fullness of divinity was, and still is, to be found expressed in a perfect, and fully human, way.  John then goes on to assure us that:

From His fullness we have all received, and grace in place of grace.

Yes, we all are offered New Testament grace ... Jesus’ Personal blessing ...  in place of Old Testament, legal, grace.

Over the centuries, men have aspired to receive gifts from God, and some have claimed to have received outstanding and striking gifts from Him.  But, because no one ever imagined that God would humble Himself to the extent of giving Himself Personally to us, -- becoming one like us, living among us and for us – consequently no one has ever before been able to claim anything more than what was humanly appreciable: as the Devil himself offered to give Jesus (according to St Matthew in his Gospel) miraculous powers of all sorts, for example to change stones into bread; to fall from great heights, unhindered, unfettered and unharmed (4:3-6); and world encompassing glory, power, and renown, that is, all the world’s kingdoms in their magnificence (4:8).

What, however, is perhaps supremely appreciable to our modern world, is the last temptation mentioned by St. Luke: the pretentious claim to goodness, and even pseudo-holiness, through work done, of oneself, without God:

Then he led Him to Jerusalem, made Him stand on the parapet of the Temple, and said to Him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, “He will command His angels concerning you.  With their hands they will support you lest you dash your foot against a stone”’

Dear People of God we, who try and aspire to be humbly obedient and faithful Catholics and Christians, have actually been given that supreme Jesus-blessing through faith in, and baptism into, Jesus Himself, the Holy One of God dwelling among us, for us. We have been given, in Jesus, a share in DIVINITY, namely (so to speak), that wonderful and unimaginable blessing of being made true, adopted, children of God even in this world; and, if we remain humbly obedient and faithfully loving, with the promise and power to become -- in Jesus, by His Spirit -- sharers for all eternity in the divine beatitude that unites Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the one Godhead.   We who are faithful believers in and disciples of Jesus, are now, and in all literal truth can become eternally, children of God, Who wills to be a Father to us.

That teaching, however unimaginable to men of old, and however much neglected, disputed, and ignored by modern generations, is vouchsafed for us by St. Paul who says, as you heard:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before Him.  In love He destined us for adoption to Himself through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the favour of His will.

Just allow the awareness of that, our Christian dignity and calling, to gently sink deeply into your mind and heart, and, for the moment, try to forget all else as you concentrate on that supreme Christian truth: God the Father has predestined you to become His adopted child in and through Jesus, His only-begotten, and most-beloved Son.

You, personally, are predestined, which means given the calling -- the opportunity, the grace, the power and ability -- to live eternally as a child of God, sharing in the eternal blessedness, glory, beauty and goodness, of God.  You are also promised the power and the grace that will enable you to live your present life here on earth in such a way as to actually gain – through God’s great mercy and goodness -- that eternal reward.  In other words, you, in Jesus and by the Holy Spirit, can now make something of your life, so that it does not just peter out and finally disappear into the sands of suffering and time, but actually grows and develops into what Jesus described (John 4:14) as:

A spring of water welling up to everlasting life.

And that concerns not only the future; it has what might be called an immediate dividend, since it offers us an unshakeable confidence with which to embrace and face up to life as we find it here and now; for -- however you may be placed at present, and no matter what the years may have in store for you – you can, by the grace of the Spirit of Jesus, use all the circumstances of your life in such a way as to help you attain that for which you, in Jesus, are predestined by the Father.  That is the conviction which sustained the suffering disciples during Roman persecutions, as we learn from St. Paul:

We know that all things work for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. (Rom 8:28)

St. Paul most earnestly desired to help his converts to recognize and embrace their Christian calling as we heard in our second reading:

I do not cease giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in the knowledge of Him.  May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to His call, what are the riches of glory in His inheritance among the holy ones.

People of God, do try to aspire to your heavenly calling!

Just consider the earthly celebrations you have had over Christmas and New Year:  I think that many of you will at least remember, from past years if not this pandemic year, finding yourselves, after such celebrations, being somewhat weary of chocolates and cakes, special meats and drinks. and perhaps also aware that excitement, hype, and pleasure-tasting -- even pleasures of the honest and wholesome type – also gradually lose their attraction: they don’t fully satisfy and can even leave you feeling disillusioned and somewhat empty and ‘at a loss’. 

All such experiences are meant to help us realise that while we are called to happiness -- for we cannot deny the hold it has over us, since it is what we constantly find ourselves looking and longing for -- nevertheless, earthly happiness does not always live up to our expectations, nor is it ever able to fulfil all our aspirations.

However, our predestination by God the Father -- our calling in Jesus our Saviour -- is to a heavenly happiness which is unalloyed joy and fulfilment for those who have been formed according to the word of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Listen to St. Paul again:

May you know what is the hope that belongs to His call, what are the riches of glory ... the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe, in accordance with the exercise of His great might which He worked in Christ raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavens, far above all principality, authority, power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:18-21)

All that is yours, People of God, provided you allow the Holy Spirit to reform you and your life. Moreover, it is a promise that cannot fail; you alone are in question.  What do you really want?  As you think that over, never forget those words of final advice from Him Who came to live, die on a Roman cross, and rise again, for our salvation:

            What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:36)

    

Mary, Mother of God 2021

 

Mary, Mother of God.

I will introduce my subject with a story taken from John Moschus, who was born in the middle of the 6^th. Century and who, early in his life, became a monk in Palestine where he lived for ten years.  Then he set out on his great voyages, undertaken with the aim of visiting many monasteries in order to gather together the traditions of monasticism and also the memories of the holy monks who had lived there.  Here is one of the stories he tells.

One of the monks told us that the priest Theodore of Aeila told him that a certain monk, a true ascetic, lived as a recluse on the Mount of Olives.  The demon of lust was troubling him.  One day when he was being terribly tormented, the monk’s patience began to wear somewhat thin and he said to the demon, ‘How long will you thus go on destroying my peace?    I have grown old in your company, depart from me.’  The demon then appeared before his very eyes and said to him, ‘Swear to me that you will tell no-one what I am going to say to you, and I will no longer make war against you.’  The monk swore, ‘By Him Who dwells in heaven, I will tell no-one of what you are about to say to me.’  The demon continued, ‘You stop venerating this icon, and I will cease to torment you.’  Now the icon represented Our Lady, the holy Mother of God, carrying our infant Lord, Jesus Christ.  The recluse said to the demon, ‘Let me reflect on the matter.’  Then, the following day, he went to the priest Theodore of Aeila – the same who told us all this – and explained to him all that had transpired.  The priest said to the recluse, ‘In truth, you made a mistake in swearing such an oath; but you have done right in telling me about it.  For it is better for you to visit every singly house of prostitution in the town rather than give up honouring our Lord Jesus Christ with His Mother.’

Do the old priest’s words puzzle you ... scandalize you?  Let me try to explain his meaning so far as I can discern it.

There are many swept away by their passions, falling time after time, being driven from one excess to another, and yet they honour and reverence the thought of the Mother of God.  They are too weak to resist their clamouring desires, but too good to gainsay the hold which Our Lady has over them; because, in the depths of their hearts, they love that which they think they cannot imitate ... the purity, the humility, the simplicity, the modesty, the boundless goodness ... which they see personified in her.  Hardly knowing why, they reverence her because the central core of their heart is warm and sensitive to what is beautiful and true.

There are others whose behaviour is much more composed, but they do not honour Our Lady because they do not love the virtues of which she is the personification.  Though they be lowly in demeaner and lead orderly, and even apparently admirable, lives, yet they have no love for the grandeur of Our Lady’s humility, cannot gaze in wonder at the beauty of her purity, nor are they struck with awe at the dignity of her simplicity.  The centre of the heart of such people, men and women, is cold and hard.

Now you can see what the old priest meant when he advised the recluse never to give up honouring his ikon of Our Lady: far better to have a turbulent yet sensitive, loving heart, than a calm but cold one.  For if the spirit of Christ be in anyone, such a person will not fail to have a true measure of devotion to Our Lady, for Christ is eternally the Lord and Saviour, and also – eternally -- the Son of Mary, Who wants to see His mother appreciated, loved, and honoured.   Western society’s present practical scorn for and rejection of Mary as a model of womanhood is, indeed, one of its darkest and most degrading stains.  

Without a love for, an appreciation of, the Church and her function, one cannot venerate Mary fully, for she is the perfect manifestation and ultimate realization of the mystery of the ideal Church, which, in the virginal purity of her faith and by the overshadowing power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, ever brings Christ to life in the souls of men, ever builds up the Mystical Body of Christ, nourishing and teaching her offspring with her sacraments and her doctrine, just as Mary cherished and taught her divine Son. 

Therefore, we read in the book of Sirach (24:11s.), as used in the liturgy, that Mary is the peculiar possession of the Church, that it is our particular privilege as Catholics to be able to love and honour her fully in the spirit of Christ:

IN THE BELOVED CITY (Jerusalem, Mother Church) LIKEWISE HE GAVE ME A RESTING PLACE, AND IN JERUSALEM WAS MY DOMINION.  SO, I TOOK ROOT IN AN HONOURED PEOPLE, IN THE PORTION OF THE LORD WHO IS THEIR INHERITANCE. 

It is life in the Catholic Church that brings forth devotion to Mary, as perhaps converts will most easily recognize, for in and through the Catholic Church, Mary becomes most fully our mother and we her sons and daughters (John 19:26s.):

        WHEN JESUS SAW HIS MOTHER, AND THE DISCIPLE WHOM HE LOVED         STANDING NEAR, HE SAID TO HIS MOTHER, ‘WOMAN, BEHOLD, YOUR         SON!  THEN HE SAID TO THE DISCIPLE, ‘BEHOLD, YOUR MOTHER!’

Thus, devotion to Mary is to be considered as necessary not as if the merits of Christ were not alone the sufficient cause of supernatural life in His disciples, but rather as a spontaneous consequence of that Christ-life in a Catholic soul.  And yet, devotion to Our Lady is not merely a spontaneous manifestation of a life already possessed, it is also a means to the attainment of what is still hoped for and aspired to.  For Mary is the most Christ-like of all the members of the Church, and her example and intercession are meant to lead us all most efficaciously to Our Lord.

And being thus inspired by her example we are impelled to invoke her intercession ... and how rightly, as we see from the Old Testament, and much more strikingly and beautifully from Our Lady’s apparitions at Lourdes, Fatima, Knock, Medjugorje ....

As you know, the Kings of Israel were meant to be in some measure figures of the Messiah, and amongst the chiefs of these kings was Solomon, endowed with God-given wisdom, and whose rule brought peace.  The mother of the king also held a very special place in Israel’s thought; indeed, she appears to have had a regular official status, which in part accounts for the frequency with which the name of the mother of the king is recorded, and the importance attached to some of her actions, cf. 1 Kings 15:13 (2 Chron. 15:16); Jer. 13:18, 29:2; 2 Kings 11:3 (2 Chron. 22:12).  The semi-royal state of Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, is shown in 1 Kings 2:19 where we are told that Solomon sat on is throne and set a throne for ‘the king’s mother’ at his right hand.

Now Adonijah -- Solomon’s elder brother -- had naturally expected that the kingdom would be his on the death of his father David.   Indeed, he even had his followers proclaim him king before David was yet dead.  You will all remember how it was only through the intercession of Bathsheba on her son’s behalf with the aged David, and that of Nathan the prophet, that the throne actually came to Solomon.  But Adonijah knew the authority and influence of the Queen Mother, and so he ... who had almost seized the throne before her son ... came to Bathsheba to ask her to obtain a favour for him from Solomon, a costly favour, the hand of Abishag the Shunamite, David’s concubine!  What a generous, understanding, person was Bathsheba, she was certainly no listener to courtly gossip or watcher of events taking place there!  She saw nothing wrong with the request of Adonijah (!!) and so, in all simplicity, she approached the King, her son, on behalf of his elder, thwarted, half-brother.  The King rose to meet, and bowed down, to his mother and said:

         Make your request, my mother, for I will not refuse you. (1 Kings 2:19)

But on hearing the request, refuse her he did ... either because his hold on the throne was too insecure, or else because he had not the forgiving heart of his mother!  But the point of the story for us is the confidence that Adonijah, of all people, the son of another wife of David, and the supreme rival to Solomon for the kingship, had in the intercession of the mother of the King.  His estimation of her generous character was not misplaced.

Now, all these things were, as St. Paul says, but a figure of the things to come in this Christian era.  We can, indeed we most certainly should, approach Mary the Queen of Heaven with absolute confidence, for she is incomparably good; moreover, she is not only mother of the King but also our mother at the King’s behest.  We need never fear that she will suffer such a refusal as Bathsheba at the hands of Our Lord and King; for the sceptre of His rule is eternally secure, none may rise against Him, and His heart is not less generous than that of His mother.

Therefore, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, let us rejoice in our Catholic privilege of being brought up to honour Our Lady fully; for to be Christian we must also be Marian, as Pope Paul VI once said.   Let us advance in our vocation by the light of her sublime example, and ever invoke her aid till the likeness of Christ her Son be fully formed in us, for God's glory, her honour, and our salvation.   Amen.