The Epiphany and the Baptism of Jesus

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Coming of the Magi: Armenian manuscript


Eastern Christian churches celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation somewhat differently than the western Christian churches. For the western Christian church Christmas is the key celebration. Visually in our western celebrations the Magi come to the stable at Bethlehem after the shepherds.

In the western world the creches are mostly put away, the Christmas trees are down, the carols no longer sung. The popular celebrations of Christ seem to end on Christmas day. The feasts of Epiphany/Baptism seem almost an afterthought in our western celebrations.

For eastern Christians, the feasts of Epiphany and the Baptism are the climax of the Christmas celebrations. Why?

Saint Proclus of Constantinople explains what these feasts mean to the eastern churches:

“The feast of the Epiphany manifests even more wonders than the feast of Christmas. At Christmas the King puts on the royal robe of his body. At Epiphany the very source unfolds and, as it were, clothes the river. On the feast of the Savior’s birth, the earth rejoiced because it bore the Lord in a manger. On today’s feast the sea is glad because it receives the blessing of holiness in the river Jordan.”

The mystery of the incarnation is complete for the eastern churches when the magi return home, the gospel is preached in their lands and their people are baptized. “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel.

For the eastern church, when Jesus enters the waters of the Jordan he immediately reaches the whole of creation and all its people, represented by the Magi and their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. This approach strongly promotes God’s plan for the global church and, especially today, an environmental spirituality. The waters of the world are blessed; they share in the mystery.

Maximus of Turin, another early Christian writer, offers this reflection on Jesus’ birth and his baptism:
“Then he was born from a virgin; at his baptism he is born in mystery. When he was born, his mother Mary held him close to her heart; when he is born in mystery, God the Father embraces him with his voice and says: ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ The mother caresses the tender baby on her lap; the Father serves his Son by loving testimony. His mother holds the child for the Magi to adore; the Father reveals that his Son is to be worshiped by all the nations.

Some historians of the liturgy see the western emphasis on Christmas and not on the Epiphany and the Baptism of Jesus originating in a fear of adoptianism– the notion that Jesus Christ took on divine status when he was baptized in the Jordan, a belief that might be suggested by the Gospel of Mark. (cf. Advent to Pentecost, Patrick Regan, Liturgical Press, 2012 62 ff )

Though their emphasis in their liturgies differ the two churches are one in their belief in the essential mysteries of faith. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” In its reform of the liturgy after the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church has emphasized the feasts of the Epiphany and the Baptism of Jesus. There is a new appreciation of the spirituality and liturgy of the eastern churches.

John the Baptist, “I am not the Christ”

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 In the days before Christmas Luke’s gospel linked the birth of John the Baptist closely to the birth of Jesus, noting carefully Jesus’ superiority to John. At the same time Luke indicates that John had a privileged role in announcing Jesus as the Messiah. Luke alone mentions John and Jesus are related.

In these day’s after Christmas John’s gospel offers the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus. “I am not the Christ,” John responds to the Jewish leaders who question him about his ministry near the Jordan River. “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert,‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”

The lower Jordan valley where John preached and baptized was a place hallowed by heroic events and figures of the Jewish past. There, for example, Joshua led the Israelites over the Jordan to conquer the city of Jericho and enter the “land flowing with milk and honey.”

Late in the 8th century B.C., the prophet Elijah began preaching reform there as Israel turned to the false gods of the wicked Queen Jezebel. God sent ravens to the Wadi Cerith near the Jordan to feed Elijah in a terrible drought. Returning to the lower Jordan, Elijah disappeared mysteriously there at the end of his life,.

Later Jewish tradition said that Elijah would return – most likely to the Jordan valley – to announce the Day of the Lord, God’s final coming. And so, when John came dressed in a rough camel hair cloak, like Elijah of old, and preached with great power at this memorable place, people wondered: “Has Elijah returned?”

For the Jews the Jordan valley was a place to recapture the ancient faith of their forebears. The desert air was purer and life more simpler in that hard, memorable land that seemed to belong to God alone.

Strongly religious people, like the communities of Qumran, preferred living in the desert to Jerusalem, rejecting what they saw was the compromise and spiritual lukewarmness of smainstream Judaism. Living there, they hoped for a Messiah and Teacher to bring renewal to their people.

Besides the communities of Qumran, Jewish revolutionaries were also associated with the Judean wilderness. In 6 A.D. after the failure of a bloody revolt led by Judas the Galilean against Roman rule, bands of his followers waged a guerrilla campaign for Jewish independence from these barren hills.

And so, the Roman authorities and their local allies kept a wary eye on anyone like John the Baptist preaching in a place so significant, a major pilgrim road to Jerusalem.

Pilgrims from Galilee came this way. Jesus himself and some of his followers were among them, John’s gospel points out. I suspect the authorities watching John the Baptist also associated Jesus and his followers with him. They needed to be watched too.

January 2: Basil and Gregory

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January 2nd is the feast of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen,  saints of the eastern church of the 4th century. They were not martyrs like Stephen and others we celebrate after the feast of Christmas. Rather, they fought for a truth so often questioned in the Christmas mystery: Who was Jesus Christ? 

Basil defended our belief in the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He upheld the divinity of Jesus Christ against the Arians who denied he was fully divine. When we say Jesus is “consubstantial” with the Father – as we do at Mass in our creed – we repeat a word used by Basil, “homoousios” (of the same essence), to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son.

Basil belonged to a well-to-do Christian family from Caesaria  in Asian Minor, a major center of the Christian world. Other members of his family are also honored as saints: his mother Emily, his grandmother Macrina, his sister, also Macrina, and his brothers Gregory of Nyssa and Peter of Sebaste. 

Gregory of Nazianzen, a school mate and friend of Basil, later became bishop of Constantinople. Like Basil, he is an important theologian who articulated the doctrine of the Trinity, He saw the trinity as “a triple light gathered into one splendor,” Family and friendship were important to Gregory and Basil. They saw the Arian heresy to be, not just a theological error, but an evil bringing fear and suspicion to the Christian community.

Basil and Gregory are considered among the greatest of the early church’s teachers.

“God’s gifts can’t be numbered,” St. Basil writes,  “The blessings of God can’t be named or understood, they’re more numerous than everything in this world of ours. Yet, one blessing stands out – God’s mercy. Keep it in mind. Mercy is God’s surprising gift, a gift that lifts us  from failure. 

“God never abandons us, even when we fail and persist in our failure. His mercy is beyond our expectations. The cross is mercy’s great sign, bringing us life. Nor was God content merely to bring us back from death to life;, God gives us also the dignity of his own divine nature and prepares a place of joy for us that surpasses anything we imagine.”

We forget mercy so easily, the saint says.

Here’s a prayer Gregory of Nazianzen offered on the occasion of his friend Basil’s death.

Good and kind God, in this life and the next, you ask so little and give so much.  If only we could be what we should be. 

Hoping in you and loving you, let us accept everything and give thanks for everything, since everything brings us to salvation through you. To you we commend ourselves and those who have reached the place of rest before us, walking the same road we do. Lord and Creator of all, our God and Father, Ruler of your children,

Lord of life and death, guide and friend of our souls.  You fashion and transform all things in due time through your creative Word, In your deep wisdom and providence, receive those who have gone ahead in our journey from this life. 

Receive us too when our time comes and guide us through the years, as long as they last. Receive us as we come humbly before you, not troubled, nor shrinking back before the day of death, like those who love this world too much. Instead, may we set out eagerly for that everlasting and blessed life which is in Christ Jesus.

To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen 

A New Year Is Here

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new year


Looking at the New Year, Karl Rahner speaks of our need for “a mysticism of everyday life.” It’s not in big things God’s grace will be found, but in steady, commonplace living. Accepting time in small dimensions readies us for its big moments.

“The New Year is coming.  A year like all the rest.  A year of trouble and disappointment with myself and others. When God is building the house of our eternity, he puts up fine scaffolding in order to carry out the work. So fine, that we may prefer to live in it.

“The trouble is we find it is taken down again and again. We call that dismantling the painful fragility of life. We lament and become melancholy if we look at the new year and see only the demolition of the house of our life, which is really being quietly built up for eternity behind this scaffolding that’s put up and taken down again.

“No, the coming year is not a year of disappointment or a year of pleasing illusions. It’s God’s year. The year when decisive hours are approaching me quietly and unobtrusively, and the fullness of my time is coming. Shall I notice these hours? Or will they be empty, because they seem too small, too humble and commonplace?

“Outwardly they won’t look different and can be overlooked: the slight patience it takes to make life slightly more tolerable for those around me; the omission of an excuse; risking good faith in someone I’m inclined to mistrust because I’ve had an bad experience with them before; accepting someone’s criticism of me; allowing an injury done to me to die away, without complaining, bitterness or revenge; being faithful to prayer without being rewarded by “consolations” or “religious experience”; trying to love those who get on my nerves (through their fault, of course); trying to see in someone else’s stupidity an intelligence that is not mine; not trading on my virtues to justify my faults; suppressing my complaints and omitting self-praise.”

Rahner doesn’t glamorize everyday mysticism. It can be both tough and boring. “Even the saints yawn sometimes, and have to shave.”

K. Rahner, The Great Church Year, New York 1994  p. 85

January 1: Mary, the Mother of God

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Mary sorrows copy
Mary. El Greco

Today we celebrate the oldest feast in the Roman calendar honoring Mary, the mother of God.  We celebrate it in the Christmas season because she is the unique witness who guarantees the mysteries of Jesus, born of Mary.. 

Who else but Mary could tell us about the early life of Jesus? It had to be her. “Mary kept all these things in her heart,” Luke says in his gospel. 

Mary and Joseph are our key witnesses to the early life of Jesus. People after the resurrection of Jesus must have asked Mary about those early years: How was he born, what was he like growing up? They must have questioned her. 

She must have told them of God’s invitation to bear his Son, of his birth in Bethlehem, the shepherds, the strangers from the east, Herod’s attempt to kill her child, the old people in the temple who recognized him, their flight into Egypt. 

She would have told them he grew up like other children, She and Jospeh were mother and father to him. They held him in their arms, fed  him, clothed him, taught him his first words, helped him take his first steps, brought him to the synagogue, instructed him in their tradition, taught him to pray, listened to his questions. Angels didn’t bring him up. They did. 

The words we hear in Luke’s story of their journey to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover are surely hers: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you.”

Yet, he was a Child beyond others. Her witness to that was so important. All looked to Mary for her word. He was God’s Son. She was God’s humble servant, She was the Mother of God. 

This ancient feast celebrates Mary’s witness to the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ. Churches of the Byzantine and Syrian rites celebrate this feast on December 26. The Coptic rite celebrates it on January 16.

From earliest days to later councils, the church turned to  Mary when it asks “Who is  Jesus?” We call on her this Christmas season to tell us who he is.

“Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, we praise, bless, and glorify your name on the Solemnity of the Motherhood of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary.  For by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit she conceived your Only Begotten Son, and without losing the glory of virginity,  she brought forth into the world the eternal Light, Jesus Christ our Lord. “ (Preface for the feast)

The papal Mass for her feast in Rome begins with this chant:

Hail Mary, most beautiful of our human race,                                                                          Virgin worthier than all others,                                                                                            enthroned in the heavens above.

Hail Mary, Virgin bearing the Child                                                                                           who sits at the Father’s right hand,                                                                                      ruling heaven and earth and all things,                                                                                            once hidden in your womb.

Hail Mary, the Uncreated God created you,                                                                                 the Only-Begotten Son loved you deeply,                                                                                      the Holy Spirit made you pregnant in a wholly divine way.

God wonderfully made and called you,                                                                                     his hand-maid, to be the mother of his Son.                                                                                        No other was made like you.

Be our mother, our comfort, our joy,                                                                                          and after this our exile,                                                                                                                    may we be with you in heaven forever.

The Word:December 31

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Adoration of the Shepherds, Giorgone , National Gallery

We end the year reading from the 1st chapter of St. John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Word of God begins all things and in the Word all find their completion.

The responsorial psalm for today calls the heavens to sing and the earth to rejoice.

  Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!
Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
    let the sea and what fills it resound;
    let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult before the LORD.

Creation today needs the blessing of the Word, doesn’t it?

St. Bridget of Sweden influenced 15th century artists, like the one above, with her vision of the Nativity. Instead of in the stable, Mary places her Child on the earth outside so that the earth –all creation– might receive his blessing along with Joseph and the shepherds.

The Word, who made all things, became flesh to bring blessings to all that came to be.

Listen to Maximus, the Confessor, speak of the marvelous adaptability of the Word made flesh:

“The Word of God, born once in the flesh (such is his kindness and his goodness), is always willing to be born spiritually in those who desire him. In them he is born as an infant as he fashions himself in them by means of their virtues. He reveals himself to the extent that he knows someone is capable of receiving him. He diminishes the revelation of his glory not out of selfishness but because he recognizes the capacity and resources of those who desire to see him. Yet, in the transcendence of mystery, he always remains invisible to all.

For this reason the apostle Paul, reflecting on the power of the mystery, said: Jesus Christ, yesterday and today: he remains the same for ever. For he understood the mystery as ever new, never growing old through our understanding of it.”

God’s love is an adaptable, respectful love. That’s the way God loves us, that’s the way he loves all creation; that’s the way we should love.

First Letter of John: God is Love

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Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7)

We read extensively from the 1st Letter of John in our lectionary during the Christmas season, reminding us over and over of the love of the  Father for the Son and the need to love one another. The letter was written during a time when gnosticism was strongly influential  in society,  promising that knowledge, especially privileged knowledge, was everything. 

Recently I heard the term  “the knowledge society”. I think it means the knowledge some people have that gives them a way of exercising  power over others in society. Maybe teachers, doctors, accountants, media celebrities. Maybe even priests and bishops and politicians. Anyone who knows something that gives them power over others. Perhaps we all have something that makes us part of that knowledge society. 

John’s letter seems to call out broadly to all possible levels of the “knowledge society” to remember the primacy of love in life.

It’s not how much you know, it’s how much you love and use what you know with love that counts.  For “love is of God.”

An 84 Year Old Apostle: December 30

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Presentation.jpg

Two elderly Jews, Simeon and Anna, meet the Child, when Mary and Joseph take him to the temple, “to present him to the Lord.” Simeon joyfully takes  the Child in his arms. “Now you can dismiss your servant in peace, Lord, because my eyes have seen your salvation.” No temple priests, no officials, no angels recognize the Child, according to Luke’s gospel, , just two old people. (Luke 2:36-40)

Anna, an 84 year temple regular and a widow after being married for only seven years doesn’t say anything when she sees the Child. In our picture above he stands behind Simeon gazing at the Child. “Coming forward at the very time,” Luke says, “she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the salvation of Jerusalem.” She doesn’t keep word of him to herself. She speaks of him to all.

The Lord comes to the 84 year old woman, to Simeon, to Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, the shepherds in the hills, the wise men from afar. He comes to all. John’s letter, which we read today at Mass, says that too. ( 1 John 2:11-17)

Anna gives thanks at the sight of the Child and goes out to speak about him to everyone she meets. “Let the heaven be glad and the earth rejoice. Go tell all the nations the Lord is King.” Our responsorial psalm says.

At 84, Anna becomes an apostle.

It ain’t over till it’s over.

The Child in the Temple: Luke 2

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Presentation in the Temple: Rembrandt

Jesus brings life to all, so even at his birth all are there. In today’s reading (Luke 2) Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple where he meets Simeon and Anna, two elderly Jews. In the temple where God dwells, they offer him to his Father.

Luke’s account doesn’t dwell on the ritual – he may not know much about it. He doesn’t write about what the priest does, or even describe much of what Mary and Joseph do. God is at the heart of his story, revealing himself through the Infant to two elderly Jews, Simeon and Anna, who wait patiently for the Messiah.

They’ve waited for years, and they are not alone. Rembrandt with his usual keen insight pictures them waiting in the dark, for they’re part of a great crowd of others in the temple. The long waiting and the darkness has not dulled their eyes. Waiting in the temple has made them sharper, for they see salvation in this little infant, ” a light of revelation to the gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” 

In Luke’s gospel, the destiny of Jesus is revealed in the temple. He begins his journey to the Father there at his birth, and he already draws  those who will accompany him on his journey, beginning with Simeon and Anna, and extending even to the gentile world who will receive his light.

Simeon’s prophecy offers a somber note as he turns to Mary. “Your own soul a sword shall pierce.” The glory of the Lord proclaimed by the angels at Jesus’ birth is not without the experience of sorrow. Mary will join Rachel and the other women who mourned for their innocent children.

We’re living in an aging society; our elderly population is increasing. The temptation is to see old age as a stage in life when all is over, but this gospel story makes us reconsider, doesn’t it? The Lord comes at every moment of life. He draws us to himself our whole life long. “ Old men (and women) ought to be explorers.” Exploring apostles.

Simeon and Anna not only wonder at the child they see and hold in their arms, but they speak about him to those “waiting for the redemption of Israel.” The great crowd waiting in the dark in Rembrandt’s painting represents all of us.

The Word Made Flesh

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Who is Jesus Christ? The questions began with Mary and Joseph and were not settled in a day. He’s more than the Jewish Messiah, the Son of David. Jesus Christ is the Word of God who became flesh.

The early creeds state what we believe:

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

The feast of Christmas celebrates that same belief. .The earliest celebration of the feast appears in a Roman church calendar from 336. A 3rd century Roman theologian, Hyppolytus, describes his time as a supermarket of revelations about God, a pantheon of divine beings, all acceptably true. The Roman empire tolerated many beliefs and systems, as long as they did not threaten the empire and its institutions.

Christmas originated as a doctrinal celebration, not a devotional one. The gospel read on this feast early on was from St. John, “In the beginning was the Word…”

Hippolytus called Jesus Christ the unique Word of God. “He is the Word who made the universe, the Savior you sent to redeem us.” Those words are found today in our 2nd Eucharistic Prayer.

Addressing the Jews, the Roman theologian claimed  the prophets spoke “dimly” about God’s Word. Now the Word made flesh speaks clearly through his humanity. To the gentile world, a world awash in various philosophies, Hippolytus spoke about the unique Word, Creator and Redeemer. Christmas celebrates this Christian belief.

By your Word you created the world and you govern all things in harmony. You gave us the same Word made flesh as Mediator and he has spoken your words to us and called us to follow him. He is the way that leads us to you, the truth that sets us free, the life that fills us with gladness.

Lets not turn Christmas into quaint story, with little meaning for our “real world.”  Speak out, Hippolytus and those like you, even if you’re not heard. Truth must be told, and told continually..