2007-01-07 - "The splendid work of our people..."

The splendid work of our people—choir, servers, lectors, ushers, parish staff and volunteers and all the faithful—to make our Christmas liturgies seem so effortless this year, has set in motion what I trust will be another great year of parish life. It is both amusing and poignant, to see the surprised reaction of people when they are greeted with “Merry Christmas” in the Christmas season, for our consumerist culture begins to drain Christmas of its meaning months before the feast and then drops the feast on the feast. The radio station that played Christmas music long before Christmas has no carols on the second day of Christmas.

The twelve days of Christmas culminate in the Epiphany. That word which means “showing” encompasses layer upon layer of events which display the mystery of the Incarnation. In the visit of the Persian wise men is shown the universal character of Christ’s saving power. In the baptism of Christ is shown the way the Holy Trinity wills to be known to all people. In the Wedding of Cana the Eucharist is hinted at in the whispered conversation of Jesus and Mary. This is summed up in a fifteen-hundred-year-old Epiphany antiphon from the Roman Breviary:

“This day the Church is joined unto the heavenly Bridegroom, since Christ hath washed away her sins in the Jordan; the wise men hasten with gifts to the marriage supper of the King; and they that sit at meal together make merry with water turned into wine.”

Each of us in our own baptism is commissioned to be walking and talking epiphanies, showing Christ to others by the unselfconscious transparency of our own lives redeemed by God’s grace. Before he was Pope, Benedict XVI preached this in the Basilica of St. Mary Major:

“He is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is no longer beyond the reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in so doing he has dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbor, restoring in this way the image of man, whom we often find so hard to love. For us, God has become a gift. He has given himself. He has entered time for us. He who is the Eternal One, above time, he has assumed our time and raised it to himself on high. Christmas has become the Feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given himself to us. Let us allow our heart, our soul and our mind to be touched by this fact! Among the many gifts that we buy and receive, let us not forget the true gift: to give each other something of ourselves, to give each other something of our time, to open our time to God. In this way anxiety disappears, joy is born, and the feast is created.”