Better late than never

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The Epiphany

Today we celebrate and remember those wise men that came from the east to worship the Christ child. We have though because of hymns that we sing and popular traditional picture of the event. But when we read the scriptures we get a surprising difference. The first thing that we notice is that the wise men visit in the house we hear that the Wise men went “into the house.” This suggests that it was some time after the birth of Jesus. They bring three gifts gold Frankincense and myrrh. This as others has suggested meant that there were three of them. Again we cannot be totally sure about this. But, we can get bogged down in the detail and not see what actually this feast means for us.
Christ today makes himself know to all nations. The wise men represent the whole of the earth. This leads me to an important question the wise men saw a sign in the sky and went to find Jesus. Their quest is the same as ours. We are also on that journey to discover who Jesus is for us. Our journey can be just as dramatic but in different ways. And yet through the mess of the human experience we are on that journey to find the person of Jesus and what he means to us.
Of course the challenge that we are faced is once we have found the person of Jesus and are gradually getting to know him what do we do with it what do we do with it? Our faith is not a private faith. It is something that should be “Alive and active.” One of the great things about the catholic faith is the freedom to have our own particular spirituality. This is great and should be encouraged. The call to holiness is something that we are all engaged in. The wise men came to do Jesus homage they worshiped him.   Our worship of Jesus is here in the Mass as Vatican II says it is the “Source and Summit” of what we do. So how do we worship here in the Church what do we bring? Well ultimately we bring ourselves we bring our Struggles of the week, the joys and sorrows we have encountered. And we place them before the feet of our Lord. We come as we are. The other thing that we do is we worship as a community as a collective of individuals saying and singing the same thing. We are in the midst of active participation. If we are keeping one eye on our Children, if we are serving or singing in the choir, or just being present here and that’s all we can do we are all actively participating it is all an act of worship and of being here in the presence of God. And through this Mass this act of worship we are encouraged and nourished to go and live out the Gospel to make Christ known to others. The act of worship does not just finish here when we go out the doors to our home. The Mass continues in our lives in the way we show Christ present to the nations. To bring that presence of God to others. 

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