Epiphany

The Christmas season is coming to a close. Today the Church observes Epiphany, a celebration that marks the nations' recognition of Jesus as the saving, loving power of God.

Yesterday I wrote about seeing Francis with the sense of faith, through good myth constructed upon a trustworthy interpretation of the sound testimonies of history. The same applies to Jesus Christ, whose phenomenon we cannot come to perceive fully except by the light of faith. The infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, namely the adoration of the magi, and the Gospels' account of Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist, are like a light reflected. They exist because the first believers mirrored to us the luminous divinity they knew to be in Jesus Christ. These stories serve to assure new generations of disciples that Jesus, whose words and works manifested God in history, also manifested the fullness of divinity in his very person from the beginning of his human existence. What was made known to the world only gradually over Jesus' lifetime is in truth the ultimate reality for all time and beyond all time.

My aim in religious life is to know the God of Jesus Christ by living like Francis. During this Christmas season, a deeper desire has dawned on me: to name and to know what God has given to me, and to receive into my personhood what has been given. To see the holy, even to touch holiness: this is what so many in the world long for in their own way. But we can and should dare more than this: to become what we would behold. For the Christian, it is to be made divine like Jesus, to become a child of God. Seeing the light, we aim to be the light. Adoration leads to communion. To confess faith in Jesus Christ is to live the faith of Jesus Christ, and then we become like the Son of God.

It is with the sense of faith, led by the Holy Spirit, that one makes a prayer such as this:

Father of light, unchanging God,
today you reveal to men of faith
the resplendent fact of the Word made flesh.
Your light is strong,
your love is near;
draw us beyond the limits which this world imposes,
to the life where your Spirit makes all life complete.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

This prayer is the alternative collect for the solemnity of the Epiphany in the Liturgy of the Hours. I will be meditating on these words for some time: "[D]raw us beyond the limits which this world imposes, to the life where your Spirit makes all life complete." What beautiful words for a beautiful hope. This world, limited though it is, is where the infinite Love dwells -- once in secret, then openly, and now within everyone who surrenders their longing to be made whole to the Holy One who makes whole.

Love comes to us, and we follow. A strong light beckons us. In the words of Blessed John Henry Newman, "Lead, kindly light."