Epiphany of the Lord, Conservations with Consequences Podcast, January 7, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany, Vigil
January 7, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of the brief homily, please click below:

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday as we celebrate the Epiphany of the Baby Jesus. I’m recording this homily in Rome on the day of the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI. I thought it would be fitting, therefore, as we pray for Pope Benedict and thank God for the gift he has been for the Church, to share some of the thoughts he gave the Church as successor of St. Peter during the eight times he celebrated the feast here, by focusing on why he said today’s feast is so important and then sharing his insights on the protagonists and elements in this history-changing story.
• The Solemnity of the Epiphany, Pope Benedict said, is the celebration of the “manifestation” of Christ to the peoples represented by the Magi as the universal king to all nations and all who seek the truth (2008). It marks the fact that “by becoming man in Mary’s womb, the Son of God [showed that he] did not only come for the People of Israel, represented by the Shepherds of Bethlehem, but also for the whole of humanity” (2011). It is the “beginning of a great procession that continues throughout history, … humanity’s pilgrimage to Jesus Christ, … to the God who was born in a stable, who died on the Cross and who, having risen from the dead, remains with us always, until the consummation of the world” (2012). But at the same time, the Epiphany shows to us God who in turn is on pilgrimage, a pilgrimage to man” (2007). This Sunday we will join “the men and women who in every age set out on the way that leads to the Child of Bethlehem, to offer him homage as the Son of God and to bow down before him” (2013).
• Who were the Magi and what can we learn from them? In 2012, Pope Benedict said they likely “belonged to the great astronomical tradition that had developed in Mesopotamia over the centuries. … But this information of itself is not enough. No doubt there were many astronomers in ancient Babylon, but only these few set off to follow the star that they recognized as the star of the promise, pointing them along the path towards the true King and Savior. They were, as we might say, men of science, but not simply in the sense that they were searching for a wide range of knowledge: they wanted something more. They wanted to understand what being human is all about. …They were men with restless hearts, not satisfied with the superficial and the ordinary. They were men in search of the promise, in search of God. And they were watchful men, capable of reading God’s signs.” In 2013 he added, they were “men driven by a restless quest for God and the salvation of the world. … They desired more than simply knowledge about things. They wanted above all else to know what is essential. They wanted to know how we succeed in being human. And therefore they wanted to know if God exists, and where and how he exists. Whether he is concerned about us and how we can encounter him. … They wanted to understand the truth about ourselves and about God and the world. Their outward pilgrimage was an expression of their inward journey, the inner pilgrimage of their hearts. They were men who sought God and were ultimately on the way towards him. They were seekers after God.” And in 2012 he added another characteristic: “They were also courageous, yet humble: we can imagine them having to endure a certain amount of mockery for setting off to find the King of the Jews, at the cost of so much effort. For them it mattered little what this or that person, what even influential and clever people thought and said about them. For them it was a question of truth itself, not human opinion. Hence they took upon themselves the sacrifices and the effort of a long and uncertain journey. Their humble courage was what enabled them to bend down before the child of poor people and to recognize in him the promised King, the one they had set out, on both their outward and their inward journey, to seek and to know.” “Two thousand years later,” Benedict said in 2007, “we can thus recognize in the figures of the Magi a sort of prefiguration of these three constitutive dimensions of modern humanism: the political, scientific and religious dimensions.”
• What about the gifts they brought? In 2010, he said, “They had brought gold, incense and myrrh. These are certainly not gifts that correspond to basic, daily needs. At that moment, the Holy Family was far more in need of something different from incense or myrrh, and not even the gold could have been of immediate use to them. But these gifts have a profound significance: they are an act of justice. In fact, according to the mentality prevailing then in the Orient, they represent the recognition of a person as God and King, that is, an act of submission. [These gifts] were meant to [communicate] that from that moment, the donors belonged to the sovereign [before them] and they recognize his authority.” And that brought them to their knees. Benedict said in 2006, “The Magi worshipped a simple Child in the arms of his Mother Mary, because in him they recognized the source of the twofold light that had guided them:  the light of the star and the light of the Scriptures. In him they recognized the King of the Jews, the glory of Israel, but also the King of all the peoples.” Their encounter with him had immediate consequences, Benedict said. “The Magi could no longer follow the road they came on, they could no longer return to Herod, they could no longer be allied with that powerful and cruel sovereign. They had always been led along the path of the Child, making them ignore the great and the powerful of the world, and taking them to him who awaits us among the poor, the road of love which alone can transform the world” (2010).
• What are the takeaways for us in the Church today? The wise men followed a star, but discovered, as he said in 2012, that “the language of creation alone is not enough. Only God’s word, which we encounter in sacred Scripture, was able to mark out their path definitively. … The great star, the true supernova that leads us on, is Christ himself. He is as it were the explosion of God’s love, which causes the great white light of his heart to shine upon the world. And we may add: the wise men from the East, like all the saints, have themselves gradually become constellations of God that mark out the path. In all these people, being touched by God’s word has, as it were, released an explosion of light, through which God’s radiance shines upon our world and shows us the path. The saints are stars of God, by whom we let ourselves be led to him for whom our whole being longs. … In the litany of saints we call upon all these stars of God.” The Church exists in order to make us stars in this sense. The Church “is called to make Christ’s light shine in the world, reflecting it in herself as the moon reflects the light of the sun,” to live in such a way that we will “all people to God through a witness of love,” (2006), letting our light shine before others so that they may our good deeds and glorify our father in heaven (Mt 5:16). The Epiphany of the Lord, he said in 2009, is “the manifestation of the Church, since the Body is inseparable from the Head. … The Church is humanity illuminated, baptized’ in the glory of God, that is in his love, in his beauty, in his dignity. … [Therefore] the Feast of the Epiphany invites the Church, and in her, every community and every individual member of the faithful, to imitate… the service that the star rendered to the Magi from the East, guiding them to Jesus to bring the light of Christ to the peoples, and vice versa, to lead the peoples to Christ.”
• Pope Benedict was certainly a star in the sense, bringing to us the light of Christ and lead us to Christ the light. His teaching, his preaching, his virtues, draw us to the Light of the World he served as his earthly vicar. We give thanks to the Lord for that light and to make our own the prayer he lifted up in 2012, that we, like him, will “allow ourselves to be guided by the star that is the word of God, [and] follow it in our lives, walking with the Church in which the Word has pitched his tent, [so that] our road will always be illumined by a light that no other sign can give us, and [so that] we too will become stars for others, a reflection of that light which Christ caused to shine upon us.”
• And that metamorphosis will take place at the altar, to what he said in 2009 is the “epiphany of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, … the most humble Sacrament in which [Jesus] both reveals and conceals his glory.” That is the epiphany for which we are now preparing this Sunday, where like the Magi, like Pope Benedict, we will meet the same Christ the wise men adored in Bethlehem, have the privilege to offer our gifts as well as ourselves, and return home changed forever.
• Eternal rest grant unto Pope Benedict, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.

The Gospel reading on which the homily was based was: 

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