The restoration of the feast of the Epiphany to its proper day in this country is to be welcomed. Keeping the 6th January as one of the holiest of days is a tradition of the greatest antiquity. The sanctification of that date since the earliest centuries of the Church's existence meant that the 6th January remained a holy day in the hearts of the faithful even if, for one whole decade, it was not recognised officially as such in the liturgical calendar of this land.
The rehabilitation of 6th January to something of its proper glory, then, is a gift which should make us appreciate all the more the treasures contained in the Feast of the Epiphany – treasures which are unpacked as the month of January progresses. In his The Liturgical Year, Dom Prosper Guéranger explains the time-honoured belief that three great events all occurred on 6th January. Although, in the western Church, the 6th January is primarily associated with the arrival of the Magi carrying their precious gifts, the Epiphany also encompasses Our Lord's Baptism and the Marriage at Cana, each of which is commemorated separately at Holy Mass this month.
These days, we hear a lot about “Dry January”. Those of us who find the intrusion of publicly-funded busybodies into our personal lives tiresome can find refreshment in the Church's celebration of Our Lord's first known miracle, at Cana, in which He changed water into an impressive quantity of top-class wine. Of course, we understand that this miracle signifies much more than the facilitation of prolonged festivities at a wedding breakfast. Its meaning is profoundly Eucharistic: the transformation of water into wine points towards the more wondrous transformation of wine into Our Lord’s most Precious Blood on the altar. In working this miracle within the context of marriage, Christ reveals Himself to us as the Bridegroom, and the Church as His Bride. As members of the Church, we await the return of the Bridegroom, and so we pray “Thy Kingdom Come” with deep conviction at Mass. We long for the Bridegroom to return in glory and establish His Kingdom in its fullness when the Church Militant on earth is subsumed, perfected and glorified in the Church Triumphant, where we are invited to participate in the eternal marriage banquet which is life in Heaven.
In the epiphanic event of Our Lord's Baptism, the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity is made manifest like an icon, in which God the Holy Ghost appears over the head of God the Son, and the voice of God the Father is heard announcing from heaven “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”. It is significant that this manifestation takes place within the context of Baptism, because it is in the Christian Sacrament of Baptism that God the Son is enthroned in our hearts, in our Baptism that we become living temples of the Holy Ghost, and in our Baptism that God the Father adopts us as His beloved children. In Baptism we are swept up into the very life of the Trinity.
The work of transformation that takes place within us at Baptism, and the transformation of bread and wine into Our Lord’s living Body and Blood, is certainly not the end of the story. With God’s divine life infused into our souls, and nourished by the Blessed Sacrament, we are invited to participate in transforming and healing this broken world around us. With our vertical relationship with God established and nurtured supernaturally, we may then set about the serious work on the horizontal plane of building His Kingdom on this earth, and especially within that small part of creation which has been entrusted to our influence – our home, place of work and parish. The Sanctifying Grace we receive in the Sacraments renders our good works pleasing to God and meritorious for Heaven.
The revelation of the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity tells us much about God’s love for us, and how we must strive to love our neighbour. The love that flows eternally between Father, Son and Holy Ghost is infinite and eternal. This means that God has no real need for us. He created us in an act of pure generosity, so that we might participate in His divine life in this world and in His glory in the life to come. The “disinterestedness” of God’s love towards us, which means that He gains nothing but only gives, means that to be true to the divine love infused into us in Baptism, we are called to practise a charity towards our neighbour which is disinterested and generous. We Christians are called to give of ourselves to those who seem to have nothing to offer in return. This is a challenge because it involves including those whom we find dull and disagreeable into what we consider to be the sacred space of our lives.
As we contemplate the value of gifts during this Epiphanytide - the precious gifts of the Magi to our infant Saviour, and the priceless gifts bestowed on us from God, we should pray that gratitude will be the father of generosity in our lives throughout this coming year.
Father Julian Large