Epiphanytide epiphanies

The Eastern Churches call this season “Theopany”—a manifestation of God. Our word “Epiphany” conveys the same idea. The Christmas Gospel recounts the anonymity of His birth. The Lord Jesus was born in a cowstall in the middle of the night while the whole world slept. Epiphany shows us how that God reveals Himself to those who have eyes to see—then and now.

In the Gospel readings of Epiphanytide, His epiphanies are delightfully obvious with delightfully subtle asides. When we begin the season, with the all-too-familiar story of the Three Kings, it’s worth remembering it’s really a story about four Kings—the three Magi bearing their precious and prophetic gifts, and the evil Herod: Three Wise Men who understand Who the Child is, and a King who will not see because he doesn’t want to. Through the season we have these epiphanies—the Holy Ghost descends as a dove when the Lord is baptized, the Doctors of Theology in the Temple listen struck mute at “the understanding and answers of a twelve-year-old, cleaning water turned into the choicest wine so a wedding party can keep going strong. These are pictures, not just of God revealing Himself, but of how He does it, why He does it, and what our response is to it—then and now.

Of course, epiphanies continue. God still reveals Himself.

As then, so now. Scripture speaks so truthfully and powerfully to us because the stories it tells, the people it describes and the God it reveals are all ring true in the experiences of our own lives. Some of us find life pregnant and rich with the presence of God; others see—and so not surprisingly find—nothing.

For the Three Kings, God was born in Bethlehem; for the fourth, King Herod, it wasn’t a Savior but a threat born that night. While St John Baptist saw God descend as a dove that day on the banks of the Jordan, others saw only a bird.

The Church is Christ’s presence on earth now, living by His Spirit, active in the lives of His people: it’s His on-going epiphany. God speaks to us at Mass and in the Daily Office through His Scriptures; His presence manifests itself to us in His Sacraments; He guides us day to day through the teaching of His Saints. He entwines Himself into the daily circumstances of our lives.

And for all this, we wonder at His absence.

It’s not that God doesn’t show Himself; it's just that we’re looking for something else.

No matter how many other “something elses” we pursue—and all of us do, me more than many others—none of them will ever satisfy us. We leave a trail of broken toys behind us, things we had to have which we only discovered after the fact weren’t the Thing we wanted.

Epiphanytide comes around year after year, telling us the old stories, offering us the chance to find God afresh, delightfully obvious, in ways both ordinary and wonderful.—Fr Gregory Wilcox