Responding to the Lord’s Manifestation, Solemnity of the Epiphany, January 7, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Solemnity of the Epiphany
January 7, 2024
Is 60:1-6, Ps 72, Eph 3:2-3.5-6, Mt 2:1-12

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• Today we celebrate with joy the feast of the Lord’s epiphany, his “manifestation” to all the Gentiles in the persons of the Wise Men coming from afar, and how every nation and person on earth is meant to respond to that ongoing manifestation. In the Magi, we learn the importance of seeking God, as they did through the study of the heavens and of the ancient Sybilline prophecies. We learn from them how the life of faith is meant to be a journey toward God, a pilgrimage we do with others. We see in them the importance of allowing ourselves to be guided on that pilgrimage, as they were by the star, and as we are by the Scriptures, by the saints, by the Church and by the various indications God gives of his presence among us. We grasp in them how the encounter with the Lord is meant to change us, how he alters our categories and expectations, and how he wants to return from the encounter “by another route,” differently than we arrived, converted to him and his ways.
• What I’d like to ponder today is what they show us about how we are to relate to God-with-us when and after we encounter him. St. Matthew tells us that, upon entering the house and seeing the baby Jesus with Mary his mother, they prostrated themselves and paid him homage. They adored him. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh: gifts respectively for a king, a priest, and someone who is going to suffer and die.
• The gift of gold points to how we’re supposed to relate, first, to Christ as our King, to serve him, to seek to do his will, to allow him to reign, to live in and try to draw others to live in his kingdom. As we sing in We Three Kings of Orient Are, the most famous English hymn for this solemnity, “Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown him again, King forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.” Our adoration of the Lord is meant to crown him, to align all our choices to his and to his kingdom. It’s meant to lead us to recognize that we’re not in charge but are stewards, heirs and heiresses, members of the royal family. St. Paul in today’s second reading refers to how, after the mystery of God in Christ was made known to him by Christ’s self-revelation outside the gates of Damascus, he became a steward of God’s grace for their benefit, so that they in Ephesus and all the nations might become coheirs of the Lord’s promise, copartners and members of Christ’s body. Today, without gold, we renew that consecration to Christ the King, to his kingdom and to this stewardship and service.
• The gift of incense points to his priesthood, to the way Jesus seeks to unite us to his prayer and to lift us and our prayers up like incense before God the Father. To give him incense at his Epiphany is to commit ourselves to praying with him in his ongoing manifestation to us. Isaiah prophesied that when the caravans of camels, dromedaries [one-humped camels] from Midian and Ephah, and all the people of Sheba came with good and frankincense, they would “proclaim the praises of the Lord.” Our response to Christ’s ongoing manifestation is this prayer, this “homage,” proskinesis in Greek, which means worship and adoration: first, worship of Jesus, and then, through, with and in him, worship of the Father by the help of the Holy Spirit. We sing in today’s famous hymn, “Frankincense to offer have I, incense owns a Deity nigh [incense means God is near], prayer and praising all men raising, worship him God most high.” To celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord well is to recommit ourselves to prayer and to entering into Christ’s prayer, especially his prayer from the Upper Room and the Cross through their living re-presentation in the Holy Eucharist.
• That leads us to the third gift, the third means by which we adore Christ at his manifestation. It’s myrrh, which is a yellow, fragrant, sap-like resin that comes from the bark of certain thorny trees in Somalia, Oman, Yemen, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia. Myrrh was used in the ancient world, and still in some cultures today, to heal wounds, dull pain, and fight germs, but particularly, because of its fragrant aroma and antiseptic qualities, it was used for burial, to overcome the stench of death and prevent the spread of disease. We see it used at Christ’s crucifixion when St. Mark says Jesus was offered on the Cross a drink of “wine mixed with myrrh” (Mk 15:23) and then at his burial, when Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea brought a 100-pound mixture of aloes and myrrh to anoint Jesus’ body (Jn 19:39). To give a baby myrrh was a prophetic sign that he would suffer and die. As we sing, “Myrrh is mine, it’s bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom, sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb.” As we pay the Baby Jesus homage today, we learn from the wise men about the necessity of ever relating to Jesus in his passion, in his suffering and death out of love for us. To give him myrrh spiritually signifies a desire to unite ourselves to him in his sacrifice. This means not merely to enter into his saving oblation from the Cross, but to make up what is lacking in us of his sufferings for the sake of his body, the Church (Col 1:24). It means to commit ourselves to imitating and extending his self-giving love, sacrificing ourselves, giving our body and blood, in charity for others, especially those in most need. We are called perpetually to give him myrrh in the way we care for him in our suffering brothers and sisters.
• As we celebrate the Epiphany today, we thank God for the gift of the lessons he teaches through the wise men about how we are to pay him homage, relating to him as the King whom we obey, as our Priest with whom we pray, as our Saving Oblation to whom we unite in loving Sacrifice. We make this homage most fittingly at the Mass, where we encounter the same Jesus as the Wise Men did, just looking different. It’s here we meet the newborn King of the Jews and the King of the Universe, humbly reigning not in swaddling clothes but under even humbler appearances. It’s here we enter into his prayer and his sacrifice. It’s here that he seeks to change us just as much as he changed Melchior, Balthasar and Kaspar, so that we might become like stars for others drawing them to the Lord’s continuous epiphany on the altar, indeed, becoming stars of wonder, stars of night, stars with royal beauty bright, westward leading (from Bethlehem), still proceeding, guiding others to his perfect light!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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