Today, we celebrate the great solemnity of the Epiphany, when God reveals himself as God Incarnate, in the person of Jesus Christ. We also give thanksgiving for the Church, which desires to bring all people to the knowledge of the God-Incarnate, Jesus Christ.
In the first reading, from the book of the Prophet Isaiah, we heard the words, “for darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the people”. Yet, God did not make his beloved creatures to dwell in darkness; and the prophet promises, that “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn”. After a long dark night, the brightness of day returns; after darkness, light arises. It’s good to be reminded of that in the tumult andconfusion of our earthly days: a light will come, and in fact, has already come. As the Second Vatican Council emphasized, in the first sentence of its Constitution on the Church: "Christ is the light of humanity [Lumen gentium]; and it is…the heart-felt desire of this sacred Council, being gathered together in the Holy Spirit, that, by proclaiming his Gospel to every creature, it may bring to all men that light of Christ which shines forth visibly from the Church” (LG 1).
The second reading, from the Letter to the Ephesians, states that the “Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise of Jesus Christ through the Gospel”. Most if not all of us here are descended from peoples who at one point in time or another, did not know Christ. Poland, for example, received its baptism in the year 966, in the year of prince Mieszko the First. Before that time, the peoples which occupied Polish territory worshipped other gods. A few years ago, in a comic-book produced to mark the 1050 th anniversary of the baptism of Poland, there is a story, which depicts the real joy of people being set free – set free from fear of the spirits of the forest, the spirits of the woods, set free from believing in fate and omens. They can now worship the God who is Light, Christ the Light.
Finally, the Gospel recounts the account of the Three Wise Men, King Herod, and the Child. The Child, who is to become the Corner-Stone of the entire spiritual structure. St. Augustine says, “Jesus is made manifest neither to the learned, nor to the just. For ignorance dominated the rusticity of the shepherds, impiety the practices of the Magi. But that Corner Stone joins them both to Himself, who came to select the foolish that He might confound the wise, and to call not the just but the sinners to repentance; so that no great one might take pride in himself, and no lowly one despair” (Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, M.F. Toal ed., vol. 1, 1957, pg. 198). We can be sure that the Wise Men received great blessing from their pilgrimage to Christ. We can be certain that Christ blessed them abundantly, for they made an effort, following their conscience, to search for the true God.
The chalk that you can take home with you is used to mark the doors of houses with the letters C plus M plus B, together with the year – 2020 – with the hope and prayer that Christ may bless that particular home or abode, and may dwell there as God, throughout the whole year. One tradition was to mark the door with chalk on the feast of the Epiphany, and not on the first day of the year – for those who were wondering as to why on the main church doors the year 2020 has only appeared today.
So, on the Solemnity of the Epiphany, we give thanks for the fact that we have been enlightened, that our hearts are set free from fear, by the Light of the World. Drawing upon the prayers of Our Lady, who witnessed the homage of the Magi, we ask that our homes too may be blessed and protected in 2020 and beyond.
(Fr. Pawel Ratajczak, OMI, Jan. 5, 2020)