Epiphany January 5, 2025
I love this feast and there is so much to talk about on this feast. In many ways it reminds me of a humble yet beautiful story of mother Teresa. One day as she was doing her ministry, she met this man who knew her and he offered to her a pack of cigarettes. Now keep in mind offering mother Teresa a pack of cigarettes is like…offering mother Teresa a pack of cigarettes. It doesn’t make sense. But she took them. Later that day, she found a man dying in the street. She was not going to be able to get him to her home of the dying to care for him. She stayed there with him to help him die not like a dog in the street but to live like an angel now. He looked at her and asked her before she died for one thing: one last smoke. She remembered she had the cigarettes. She was so overjoyed of how particular was God’s love for this man.
Today’s feast centers around 3 men called Magi “Magos” and a star. They did not let anything become an obstacle to them. Some people will talk about a conflict of science and religion. However these men saw within the harmony of the planets and stars something beyond. It spoke to them in their particular language. All people are called by God, and many times God will speak the language they are familiar with. Think of Our Lady of Guadeloupe. God uses the originalities of this world since he authored them and can use them to point to him. So its not those things that are the obstacle to God. God wants to be found and Christ calls clearly.
The main thing to focus on is that they set out. God does and gives many things that call and allow us to look at him. Normally God at first uses the things more apparent but also most familiar with us. Even the miracles that the church celebrates, the word miracle comes from the word ‘mirar’ like Spanish ‘mira’, doesn’t just mean to look at but to almost gaze upon, the understand. The church has often seen that God uses miracles. The Charlene Richard miracle lately has been just such a miracle: a women with a baby in the womb received a diagnosis of a terrible brain abnormality. Abortion was recommended. She prayed to Charlene and healed then made a pilgrimage and baby born totally fine. So many people look at this.
However, the things is that we have the choice. The wisemen show us that when they saw the star they set out. Had they not set out they would have never seen anything more than a star. So too with us. Will we set out? They had to leave the comfort of home, face darkness, loneliness, cold, a foreign land. And even for a time the star disappeared. Because it went into their hearts. It shown again to lead them to the child Jesus. We too, if we don’t set out on a journey of faith, these particular stars, these miracles, they will remain just signs to see with the eye. But the magi saw that the star became the son, the Son of God. So too when we set out on a journey of faith, we find God.