From the top of the year
​By ancient tradition, the Church sets the dates for the coming year’s liturgical feast at the Epiphany Mass, based on the date for Easter. This year, we will celebrate the Great Pasch on March 27, and from our Epiphany perch at the top of the year we can see the year’s great mysteries opening before us. Isn’t it wonderful to celebrate these mysteries every year, going more deeply into their graces every time? God always gives us another chance….
 
Starz and the Star
Fr. Philip, the Russian Orthodox priest a few blocks over, called me today. He wondered if he could have some of our cast-off poinsettias for his Russian Christmas on Wednesday (January 6). He assumed that we Romans would have ended our Christmas festivities early, while the Russians were just getting going. I told him that we will be celebrating Christmas until next Sunday, but that we could come up with at least a dozen poinsettias for our Slavic brethren down the street. This is one of the joys of city life, to have so many interesting cultures and friends within a stone’s throw.
 
Epiphany is truly the day of gift giving: Jesus received gifts from the Magi, but the Magi received the far greater gift of seeing God face to face. St. Matthew tells us that the Magi were “overjoyed” at seeing the star, not only because of its shining brilliance, but because its beauty led them to the Savior. When they found Jesus and his Mother, they forgot all about the star! They prostrated themselves and did homage to the King of Kings, who makes the stars (have you ever seen those blazing images from the Hubble telescope of a “stellar nursery?” the Lord’ is continually giving birth to new stars!). But we poor humans commonly mistake the stars—sport stars, movie stars, political stars—for the Creator and Lord of the stars. My mind may wander from the altar at Mass, but it is glued to the TV screen when my favorite basketball star is poised to throw his three-pointer.
 
A Light shines in the darkness
The preface of the Mass often pinpoints the core mystery of a liturgical feast. Today’s preface describes Epiphany in these words: “When your Only begotten Son appeared in the substance of our mortality, he repaired us by the new light of his immortality” (my translation). Simply unveiling his divine face—by shining his “new” light upon us, Christ remakes us. The magi saw this light radiating from the baby’s face and it transformed them. Think of how a child’s smile can disarm us. Now think what it must’ve been for the Magi, the shepherds, St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary, to look into the face of Jesus. If only Herod would have looked into that baby’s face! The prolife movement most effectively changes hearts when it simply shows the face of the child to those who promote abortion.
 
Simply by shining on us, Christ’s light restores our humanity. No darkness can overcome our true humanity, born in the image of God. The revelation of that unconquerable light is essential to our faith, such that the traditional form of the Roman Rite repeats it after every Mass in the so-called Last Gospel: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.” Who knows what new forms of darkness this year might bring? Yet we begin this year with an unshakeable faith in the Light that cannot be overcome, the light streaming from Christ’s sacred face, the light reflected in the face of his Holy Mother, and all who join him in his saving mission. We must believe, as we enter this new year, that Christ’s light will not be overcome.

I wish you a blessed and merry “Little Christmas,” as the Irish call January 6. In the south of Ireland, so Wikipedia tells us, the men all take on the household duties on this day while the women go to parties or shop for those after-Christmas bargains with their sisters, mothers, aunts, and daughters.

Herod wants to be a star

The Wise Men followed the Christmas Star and, on this day, find Jesus all brightly shining under the Star’s beam. King Herod also saw that star, but what did it mean to him? Absolutely nothing. Poor Herod (first, his name is positively frightful) considered himself a rising star in the Roman Empire. He became governor of Galilee at age 25, and to consolidate his position banished his first wife and their son, sent hundreds of priests to their deaths, and finally murdered his second wife and their children. And of course he killed all the baby boys in Bethlehem in a fanatical attempt to maintain control. He spent his life seeking to be a star rather than to follow a star, leaving a trail of blood, destruction, and anguish behind him.

Wise Men look up not down

No one can see the arresting beauty of the Star, or the Babe, or his Mother, unless he looks up, beyond himself. The Wise Men looked up, studying the heavens. They prayed to God rather to themselves. “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart, a simple look turned toward heaven; it is a cry of recognition and of love…” wrote St. Therese. They recognized God, while Herod recognized nothing familiar in this world, a stranger to himself and a monster to others.

There’s only two ways to go in this life: up or down. I can be a Herod, or I can be a Wise Man. I can choose to complain, to rant, and to despair, or I can choose to thank God, to edify, and to rejoice in the life God has given me. This joy is not just the power of positive thinking; it is “a cry of recognition and of love.” We recognize that God loves us, and that nothing is beyond Him.

No one wants to be a Herod, not even Herod. No one wants to kill babies, or their own wife and sons. But unless we study the heavens like the Magi, we will sink with him into that chaos. Prayer enlarges the heart and makes it capable of receiving the infinite God. Take the trouble to pray, to look up instead of down, to seek and expect joy. Take the trouble to stop in the church, or stop at an open window, and to look up instead of down.