“He must increase; I must decrease.”
By these words, St. John the Baptist indicates that the Epiphany, the manifestation of our Lord in the flesh, is complete. John’s disciples have got it wrong; they took offense at Jesus baptizing when he himself had been baptized by John. They assumed that because John had baptized Jesus, that Jesus must in some way be inferior to John. But John knows his mission as the Forerunner. He knows that his ministry was one of paving the way for Jesus and the Gospel. He knows that his own baptism was a mere precursor of the baptism that Jesus would bring, a baptism that imparts the fullness of the Holy Spirit to all believers.
“He must increase; I must decrease.”
St. John the Evangelist tells us in his letters that we are to be on guard against those who come in the name of Jesus but are not of him. We must be wary of pretenders and totally turn away from false idols. He has spent this past week in our first readings giving us the standards of discernment that help us to know the Truth. Anyone of the Truth will testify to the Incarnation of Jesus in the flesh. Anyone of the Truth will love deeply, and will love neighbors as well as God. Anyone of the Truth, he tells us today, will cast out sin, from himself and from others. Even though he may not be perfect, still he will battle sin and turn to Christ incarnate in the flesh for the indwelling of the Spirit, for the grace of his baptism.
“He must increase; I must decrease.”
Christ came in the flesh, as the Psalmist tells us today, because the Lord takes delight in his people. His people then, must take delight in him. We must remember that we are all in the service of the one who came to set us free. We must remember that our own thoughts, our own desires, all of these are not the be-all and end-all of existence, and quite often, we must die to them in order to let God be manifested among us. As we offer and prepare our gifts for the Eucharist today, may we also offer the decreasing of ourselves in order to pave the way for the increasing of Jesus Christ.
Month: January 2008
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Saturday after Epiphany
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Thursday after Epiphany
Today’s Scriptures continue to reveal Christ manifested in the flesh, and the way his manifestation looks today is like love. We have the great joy of reading from the first letter of John today, and John is always about love. Today John gives us a discerning test, so that we can see if a person is of God. The test is whether that person loves his or her brothers and sisters. Because one cannot claim to love God who is so very much beyond us, if we cannot love the brother or sister who is right in front of us.
That can prove to be a very daunting test to be sure. Because we’re not very often irritated by the God who is beyond us, and much more often irritated by the brother or sister who is always right there in our face! Still, the commandment is clear: “Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
Jesus Christ is the personification of God’s love for us. God came to be among us not in some kind of ethereal nature, but with a human face and a human heart, and a love that overcomes all the flaws of our flesh. It is that love that sets us free. In Jesus, all the prophecies of deliverance are fulfilled: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus says, “because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
And if our own love for our brothers and sisters can transcend our petty day-to-day irritations, or even our deep-seated hurts and resentments, than maybe we can set people free, and even set ourselves free, and make Jesus incarnate in the world yet again. -
Monday after Epiphany
Perhaps our devotion for this Epiphany week should be to pray the Mysteries of Light on the Rosary. Epiphany is a time of manifestation, of light coming into the dark place that our world can be at times. We long to see, and more than that we long to see Christ, the one who comes with peace and justice to make all things right.
Today’s Mystery of Light, then would be “Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God with its call to repentance,” the third Mystery of Light. This preaching is accompanied by the great and mighty acts of healing, which have the crowds flocking to him in droves. They definitely see in Jesus a light that shines into the darkness of their lives, marked as they are by illness both physical and mental, but also perhaps overwhelmingly spiritual.
John speaks to us today in the first reading about the discernment of spirits. How do we know what is of the spirit of God and what is of a spirit of deception? John tells us that the decisive test is whether or not that spirit acknowledges that Jesus is incarnate in the world, that he has come to live among us and continues to shed light on the darkness of our world and of our lives. Anything that prefers the darkness, then, is of a spirit of deception.
Because there were all sorts of people who didn’t flock to Jesus. Many saw him as a charlatan and thought his healings were smoke and mirrors. They preferred the darkness. The same is true today. Many hear the word and turn away from it. Many hear of the kingdom with its call to repentance and choose to turn away. But we cannot be that way. We have the Light, and we are called to live in the Light. Living in that Light, as the Psalmist tells us, gives us the nations for our inheritance.
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The Epiphany of the Lord
We gather together today to celebrate the twelfth day of Christmas. Today is the traditional day for the celebration of the Epiphany of the Lord, a time when we can see who Christ really is, when our eyes are enlightened, and our hearts are opened. Because there is a gift to be had here today; more precisely, I think there are three gifts to be had here today. The magi famously offered their three gifts: gold, frankincense an
d myrrh. I don’t think we can expect to receive those gifts today, although we’ll use a bit of frankincense later in this celebration. But the Scriptures today speak of three gifts that come with this Christ Child … the one who continues to lay sleeping in the manger on this holy day. The first fist gift he brings us is justice. Justice is what people long for in every age. When everyone has what belongs to them, when no one is poor or needy, when the marginalized are brought into the community, when the wrongly imprisoned are free, when everything is right and we are all in right relationship with one another and with God, that is justice. People have striven for justice in every age and place. While we are all called upon to do what we can to make justice happen in our world, we know that we do not ultimately have the power to bring the real justice that this world longs for all by ourselves. That can only be done by God, and in God’s time. Our psalmist today says, “Justice shall flower in his days…” The gift the Christ Child brings is the possibility of that great day of justice. We know that because Christ has died and risen, we can count on the salvation that will be ours on that day when everything is made right.
The second gift Jesus brings is peace. Peace, too, can be an elusive thing for us, and peace, too, has been sought after for ages upon ages. We often think of peace as the absence of conflict. And that alone is daunting. We have conflict in many places today. We think of Iraq, Afghanistan, and many places in the middle east, to say nothing of Africa, Korea, and many other places. I’m not even sure, honestly, how to count the number of wars being fought today. And this says nothing about the lack of peace that is violence in our communities, discord in our families, and unrest in our hearts. If we are to define peace as just the absence of conflict, it is clear that even that is beyond us.
But that’s not how God defines peace. Peace is more than a feeling, it is a way of living, or more exactly, a way of being. It stems from the right relationship that is justice. In fact, we are told that if we are to desire peace, we must work for justice because peace can’t happen in an unjust world. If the mere absence of conflict is a peace that we can’t seem to achieve, how much less will we ever be able to come to a peace that is a completeness of right relationships with God and every other person? And yet, this child in the manger is the one who has come to bring “peace till the moon be no more.”
The third gift Jesus brings is light: the revelation of the mystery. And that’s what we celebrate today. “Epiphany” means “manifestation,” it means coming to know what’s right in front of us. Coming to see the revelation of Christ in the Scriptures, in the Church, in the Sacraments, and in every person and place. It is a celebration of light, light that is the glory of God, appearing and overcoming the darkness of a world that does not know God. Jesus came to a world that was darkened by the absence of justice and peace, into a world which in some ways didn’t want to be brightened by his life. So basically, he was coming into a world not much different than the one we experience today. Our time’s need for justice and peace is obvious, and the world’s refusal to come to the light is well-known. But we have the light. Jesus came to bring us that light. Maybe it’s not the light of the star on that night, but it’s the light of Scripture, of his presence in the Eucharist, and his activity in the Church and in our hearts.
We who have received the wonderful gifts of his justice and peace and light, are called to bring those gifts to the world, because the gifts we receive are never just for us. St. Paul tells the Ephesians – and us – today that we are called to be stewards of these gifts, given to us in grace. And so, just like the magi, we are the ones who need to bring our gifts and open our coffers.
Epiphany is the feast of those called by God's grace to leave behind the familiar and accustomed and to go searching for Christ in, what seems to be, the most unlikely places. Where will we find him and what gifts shall we bring when we discover Christ in our world? In place of frankincense, we could advocate for poor families, especially for single parents and the newborn. There are 25 million poor children in our otherwise-wealthy country, and untold numbers throughout the world. In place of gold, we could contribute to help those at shelters for homeless families, or international programs for children and the aged. In place of myrrh, we could visit the sick and dying.
The gospel story tells of a light in the sky that guides the foreigners to Christ. We don't have the star; but grace is continually given to help us find Christ. God's grace does what the star did for the Magi, it guides us to the out-of-the way places where Christ can be found. The Magi came bearing the types of gifts one would bring to royalty in a palace. But today Christ isn't found in a palace; he isn't rich, he is poor. The Epiphany reminds us that each day Christ manifests himself to us in the world's lesser places and in surprising people. Those are the places to go looking and bearing gifts—starting with the most important gift, ourselves.
We will come forward in a few moments to pay homage to our king, just as did those Magi so long ago. When we offer our gifts on this holy day, perhaps we can also offer the gift of ourselves, this gift that we ourselves have received from God himself. As we begin this year, perhaps we can resolve to make our giving an act of gratitude for all that we have received. Nourished by our Savior today, we can go forth in peace to bring gifts of justice, peace, and light to all the world.
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Christmas Weekday
Not everyone has St. John the Baptist around to point out the Messiah to them. Lots of us, I think, at one point or another, would have loved to have been in the sandals of those apostles when Jesus was passing by. As much as we believe that Christ is present in every person, place and time, I’m sure lots of us would love to have St. John the Baptist point out when we’re missing Christ’s presence in some person or situation. It’s harder when you don’t have the Forerunner showing you the way.
But not everyone even recognized Christ – or at least who he was – in that time and place either. St. John tells us in our first reading that people don’t recognize that we are children of God because they didn’t recognize God in Christ in the first place. So if we miss Jesus in some situation or person, well, our mistake is not unique to us.
During this Christmas season, we are celebrating the Incarnation: the presence of God among us. Of course, this isn’t just about the presence of God among us two thousand years ago, but his real presence among us in every person, in every place and blessing, and especially in the Eucharist. During this time, we might gaze on the manger and long to have been there gazing into the face of Christ. We can gaze into the face of Christ today by taking time to reach out to someone in need. During this time, we might imagine ourselves next to the Manger on that night long ago, and long to have been there, holding the Christ Child in our arms. In a few minutes, we can come to the Altar and receive our Jesus and hold him in our hands in the Eucharist. Jesus is just as incarnate, just as Emmanuel, God-with-us, now as he was back then.
We will be strengthened by the Eucharist today to go forward and see Christ all around us. Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!
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Mary, the Mother of God
Today, on the Octave day of Christmas, we have an opportunity on this Christmas Day to pause and celebrate Mary, the mother of God. This solemnity is a special one for us as Catholics because people for a long time argued over whether Mary, a human being, could possibly be the mother of Jesus, who is God. Eventually, the Holy Spirit led the Church to realize that downplaying Mary’s role in all of this really downplays Jesus’ divinity, which is totally wrong. To say that Mary is not the Mother of God is, in some way, to say that Jesus is not God, and that’s not what we believe. So, for centuries the Church has taught that “Mary is the Mother of God the Word according to his human nature.”I had to memorize that line in my second year of seminary, and I’ll never forget it. Basically, there are two parts. Mary is the Mother of God the Word: Mary, chosen from all eternity to be a virgin inviolate and a fit Mother for God, is blessed by conceiving the only Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Calling Jesus “God the Word” in this definition takes us to the opening verses of the Gospel of John which tells us that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Word is traditionally believed to be the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
The second part of the definition asserts that Mary is the Mother of Jesus according to his human nature. We know that Jesus was both human and divine, and both natures coexisted in Jesus Christ without any diminishment of either nature at the expense of the other. We also know that only God himself could beget God the Word, but it would have to take a human woman, a very special human woman, to be the mother of his human nature. Jesus is one in being with the Father, as we pray in the Creed, but he is also one in being with us through Mary, in his human nature.
St. Paul tells us today that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters.” Today we rejoice in Mary’s faith that God’s promises to the human race would be fulfilled through her. It is because of her faithfulness that God was born into our world in the person of Jesus Christ and became one of us, walking our walk, living our life, dying our death, and leading us to new life that lasts forever. If not for Mary’s fiat – her “yes” to God’s will for her – salvation history might have gone poorly. Thankfully, because of her great faith, we have adoption as sons and daughters of God.
Did Mary understand all of this when she said yes to God’s will when Gabriel came to announce the birth of Christ in her? Probably not. But she, as our Gospel tells us today, “kept all these things and reflected on them in her heart.” She was able to study the Gospel before it had ever been written, by reflecting on all the events surrounding the birth and life and death of her Son. And because of Mary, we can reflect on it all too, and rejoice that we are sons and daughters of God.
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