Epiphany

Three mysteries mark this holy day:
today the star leads the Magi to the infant Christ;
today water is changed into wine for the wedding feast;
today Christ wills to be baptized by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation.
-- Antiphon for the Canticle of Mary, Evening Prayer II, The Epiphany

Let us begin at the beginning. Everything that is communicates to us. First, it communicates its appearance -- color, weight, texture, solidity, and so forth. Second it communicates a wonder, the wonder of its being, of its being at all. I like to think that behind every particular thing, Being itself peaks out at us. So the Canticle of the Three Young Men in Daniel is fulfilled: all creatures yield praise to Being itself.

Paul says early in Romans that the things that are made bear what you might call a common or general instruction about God. And it is clear that from the beginning, in separating light from dark, dry land from the waters, and in making good things to eat God has shown his intention to save us. There is and has been a constant, if "garden variety," revelation at least since there were angels and humans to receive it.

Throughout the Old Testament, God continues His self-disclosure, not only in Torah, but in judgments, deeds, and words of deliverance. In His revelation He declares that He dwells not only as some philosophical absolute but in intimacy with the lowly and contrite to "revive" them. (Isaiah 57:15)

"But in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son!" (Hebrews 1:2) So, now we have a baby, and that infant sends such ripples through the world that star-gazers, rough men, and angels respond.

But in a world of time and motion, it is unlikely, if not impossible, that the unveiling, the unfolding, the Divine self-disclosure, could be completed in a few minutes or days of that rapture of which neonates alone seem capable. Those gazing eyes show the Love, but not all that it means.

So the Epiphany, the Theophany, the Revelation is Magi, Baptism, the miracle, the "sign" (as John says,) of Cana, and more -- all these expound the Glory. In the Sundays between the Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, the chronicle of Epiphany continues.

But it continues. In Lent the fullness of God's glory is born to Jerusalem, Gethsemane, Golgotha, and Sepulcher. Through Paschaltide the wonder of the risen Lord perfects and reveals the power of the Love in the infant's eyes.

It began when God called forth the Light in the mysterious Melchizedek and the anointed gentile Cyrus,  the glory is seen to have leaked beyond the borders of the children of Israel. It is God's continuing investiture of all that He has made, of all that is fallen and estranged. And if the last enemy to be conquered is death, the penultimate is the necrotic portions of our own hearts, where death and Hell fight a furious and despairing retreat.

But His strength is perfected in weakness, His presence is perceptible (most of the time) only to the faithful heart, and His perfect self-disclosure begins in a conversation between an assenting maiden and an angel, and will be completed when He comes again.