With all the commotion of Christmas, it would be easy to let the Feast of Epiphany (January 6) and its short season (January 7-February 21) before Lent begins to slip away between the two major festivals of the church (Christmas and Easter). It would be a shame to do so, as Fr. Thomas Keating points out:
Epiphany is the crowning feast of Christmas. We tend to think of Christmas as the greater feast, but in actual fact, it is only the beginning. It whets our appetite for the treasure to be revealed in the feasts to come. The great enlightenment of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery is when we perceive that the divine light manifests not only the son of God has become a human being, but that we are incorporated as living members into his body. This is the special grace of Epiphany.[i]
I forced my husband to leave the undecorated tree up until after Epiphany this year—though he likes to bring things back to order by New Year’s Day at the latest. I wanted the tree to remind me of the personal significance of this feast for my life. In this feast that commemorates the visit from the Magi in Bethlehem, we witness the Gentiles being brought into the great work of God through Jesus Christ. At Christmas we recognize that Christ comes to the least of these (a poor couple from Nazareth and lowly shepherds—the dirty job of the day). At Epiphany we see the babe was announced through the science of the day—astronomy to the wise men from afar who were Gentiles no less.
And the Feasts do get bigger and grander as they progress. From Epiphany we move on to Lent that climaxes in the Easter Celebration of the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord. How can it get any greater than that? We continue to ascend by what we celebrate next—Pentecost, when we mark the coming of the Holy Spirit to dwell in the hearts of believers 50 days later. The season of Pentecost also called Ordinary Time lasts the longest and then we start the celebration over again, over and over until the cycle is broken by the return of our Lord to celebrate the festival He has been waiting for longer than we—the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Then who knows what God has planned for us in eternity?
So open your heart to the short season of Epiphany. A new light has dawned, and Epiphany only helps brighten what happened during the seasons of Advent and Christmas. Interestingly enough, it was the Gospel writer to the Hebrews, Matthew, who tells us this story of the Magi from the East in Matthew 2:1-13. No doubt its significance to the Hebrews was the explanation for the horrid act of Herod the Great against the mothers of Bethlehem when he ordered all boys under the age of two slayed in a mass murder. These Wise Men as we have come to know them asked one wise question in Matthew 2:2, Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him. The illumination of Epiphany begins right there. You have seen and experienced again the light given off around the celebration of the birth of Jesus this Christmas season. Now you are asked to keep searching for Him so that you can personally worship Him as well. This will mark your true epiphany.
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