Feast of the Epiphany

 

First Reading:  IS 60:1-6

Responsorial Psalm:  PS 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13

Second Reading:  EPH 3:2-3a, 5-6

Gospel:  MT 2:1-12

 

Reflection

By: Carlo Alexis Malaluan

 

Last Christmas season, I watched a 1985 classic movie entitled "The Fourth Wise Man". It was Martin Sheen who played the role of Artaban, the Fourth Magus whom like the other three Magi, knew about the upcoming birth of the Messiah. However, unlike the other three who did make their way to see Child Jesus, he missed the caravan but still continued to search for the Holy One. Years have passed and Artaban spent much of his remaining wealth to help the poor and the unfortunate he met along the way until at the end of his life, he met Jesus, the foretold Messiah, at his trial!

 

Oftentimes, we seek Jesus. We are on a long journey to look for Jesus only to find disappointments. Instead of Jesus, we met people who are not Jesus or even Jesus-like! We meet the poor, the hungry, the weary, the tired, and the unfortunate. They are not the images of Jesus we have in mind, but unknowingly, Jesus reveals himself to us in ways we cannot imagine and in people we do not expect. Of course, practically, we can no longer see Jesus in the household of Joseph but the experience of the Epiphany is always inviting to experience God.

As we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, let us thank the Lord for the Epiphanies in our lives. In our daily encounter with our neighbor and friends, in answered prayers, in our unexpected conversations with strangers we met along the commute, in storms and trials, and in subtle experiences of life, Jesus reveals Himself to us tenderly. And these are indeed life-changing.

Every encounter with God is life-changing just like as how the Magi in the Gospel changed their ways back home, never to return back to Herod. But we are also being challenged, how can we become Epiphanies to other people? Do our words and actions lead people to the encounter of God? Does our presence make other people feel God's dwelling? Let us strive to become bearers of God's love to others.

 

Let me share with you this beautiful prayer.

 

Prayer

 

Lord of All Nations, we longed to see Your face, to hear Your voice. We kept the faith and reached You in our prayer but too often, we failed to find You. And then, one day in time You placed Yourself within reach in the person of a child as vulnerable as any of us. King and peasant beheld You -- man and woman, slave and free, Jew and Gentile for You had come for all. "Epiphany" we called it --  a living manifestation of the God we call upon. We have since known other Epiphanies: we have met you in the faces of our brother, the grace of our sisters, the hand that reaches out, the heart that weeps for the other, in the strength of one who protects, in the gentleness of one who forgives. We have seen Your face. We have heard Your voice. As broken as we are, as scared and hollowed and sinful, may other see something of You in us, may they hear the sound of Your voice. May You be revealed to all nations, all peoples on earth and may Epiphanies abound. Be born in us, O Lord. Amen.

(Prayer of the Catholic Relief Services)