A Homily for the First Sunday after the Epiphany

+ Three events are recounted in the Epiphany of Our Lord, the arrival of the Magi, the Baptism of Our Lord and the transformation of water into wine in Cana. Whilst these three have a particular place in Christian tradition, every event surrounding the birth of Our Lord has an epiphanic quality to it – the angel is ever proclaiming the Christ is born, through the annunciation the messages to St Joseph and finally to the shepherds. And yet for all of this preparation, twelve years after his birth, Our Lord bewilders His Mother and foster-father with His response to his Mother’s question about why He stayed in the Temple at the end of the feast. This is a testimony to His perfect subjection to His parents whilst living with them in Nazareth. Where else, unless in His Father’s House, would He be?
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Our Lord’s response, nonetheless, can be called another epiphanic act, in that He Himself states openly Who He is: the eternal Son of the Father. Whilst His wisdom amazed those present and those questioning Him, He does not here indicate His Cross as is implicit in the gifts of the Magi and in His speaking of His hour at Cana. It will only be when His hour is come and He hangs on the Cross, that He should be fully known, for it is at that hour that His Incarnation, the whole Law and all the Prophets are fulfilled. It is in that hour that the power of death is broken.

Everything Christ does, He does for our salvation. Nothing that He does is meaningless. His words, His acts are at once Revelatory and Salvific. This holds true from the time God gave the Law to Moses on Sinai (O Adonai antiphon), and before in visiting Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, through to His coming again in judgement. Certainly, it is true that certain aspects of the Law are no longer necessary but which those are can only be told unto us by another Divine Revelation – a Revelation which definitively occurred in Incarnation of Our Lord and, since the death of the Last Apostle, can happen no more.

Just as it His contemporaries found it of great difficulty to recognise the God made man in the child Jesus, so it is often difficult for us to recognise His identification with the Church through the abundance of sin which is found in her members. How much the graver is this tendency when her ministers, especially her prelates, no longer preach Christ crucified (cf. I Corinthians 2:2) but a worldly ideology accepting sin. We cannot change what has been done but let us ever listen to the exhortation that the Apostle makes to us during this Holy Mass, “be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God.”

To be reformed in newness of mind is truly the mark of a Christian. We must ever maintain an awareness of the reality of God of His demand for our conversion. It is the living reality of the Epiphany – the appearance of God – within our minds whereby we can recognise the hand of God ever operative in guiding us unto His Glory — for our salvation glorifies God. It is born through the generous response to His grace which is ever being given to us to raise us from the standards of the world which seek to drag us down and away from God. They seek to hide the reality of Jesus’ Divinity behind false compassion, which serves only to please men.

In the newness of mind which the Apostle asks of us we must recognise the Divine Institution of the Church which is the mystical body of Christ. Look rather to her Divine institution than the worldly standards degenerating her into the mere men who hold responsibility, and ever recall that the channels of grace, the sacraments, can only be found in the Church. Further, we must never forget that the Church comprises not just those of us here militant on earth, but all the angels and saints enjoying the beatific vision, and the holy souls in purgatory.

We must never fail to recognise the Truth of Christ, to proclaim Him, and Him alone, as the Saviour of man. Christ’s Divinity, however, does not protect His Church from being filled with bad people using it for their own ends. This does not change the divine foundation and constitution of the Church. A foundation which cannot fail, yet it ever needs defending against attacks from both outside and inside.
St Augustine was involved in unending polemic against the Donatists who removed themselves from the Church because there were many there who turned back to the faith after apostatising under duress. The Donatists left the Church for it was not according to their ideal of self-righteous purity. St Augustine admits that evil is present and how Christ declared that He will come again in judgement.

Even whilst we live alongside the evil that is present, we must earnestly strive for the conversion of life that is demanded of all men — both of self and, insofar as it lies within our competence, of our neighbour. There is always a little more we can do to grow in virtue, to honour God. Right doctrine is required for right action: there can never be a separation between the two realities. Yet precisely by knowing the Truth of God we will ever be ready to respond to our changing responsibilities and health circumstances under God. Through the conversion and acting according to truth “the good, the perfect, the acceptable will of God” shall be proven as it has so many times before in history.

Let us beg of God, in this Holy Mass, never to be blinded to His saving presence in our midst. In praying the Sacred Liturgy, in absorbing the rites and texts, we can ever reform our mind to keep the ever newness of He Who is eternally born of the Father a reality before our eyes. Let us have a true awareness of the ecclesial holiness which is at its apex in praying the Mass where Christ, our Head, leads us toward His glory if we will but follow Him. +