{"id":10656,"date":"2016-01-03T13:45:37","date_gmt":"2016-01-03T18:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/?p=10656"},"modified":"2016-01-03T13:45:37","modified_gmt":"2016-01-03T18:45:37","slug":"with-willing-feet-seeking-christs-mercy-seat-solemnity-of-the-epiphany-january-3-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/with-willing-feet-seeking-christs-mercy-seat-solemnity-of-the-epiphany-january-3-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"With Willing Feet Seeking Christ’s Mercy Seat, Solemnity of the Epiphany, January 3, 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fr. Roger J. Landry
\nSacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
\nSolemnity of the Epiphany
\nJanuary 3, 2016
\nIs 60:1-6, Ps 72, Eph 3:2-3.5-6, Mt 2:1-12<\/p>\n

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To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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The following text guided today’s homily:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Manifestation of the Fulfillment of God’s Promises<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we celebrate the feast of the Lord\u2019s epiphany, his \u201cmanifestation\u201d to all the Gentiles in the person of the Magi coming from afar. We celebrate the fulfillment of the prophecy to Abraham, that he would become not just the father of the Jews but of \u201cmany nations.\u201d We mark the fulfillment of what God announced to us through the prophets, that God\u2019s salvation would reach not merely to the confines of the Holy Land but go to the end of the earth. We have a foretaste of what we sang today in the Responsorial Psalm, \u201cLord, every nation on earth will adore you,\u201d as we see kings bring him gifts, tribute and homage. We have the realization of what Isaiah foretold in the first reading, that nations would walk by light coming from Israel, that those even as far away as Sheba in the desert would come bearing gold and frankincense and proclaiming the Lord\u2019s praises. And St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, helps us clearly to grasp the meaning of this feast, when the \u201cmystery \u2026 not made known to people in other generations \u2026 has now been revealed,\u201d namely, \u201cthat the Gentiles are coheirs \u2026 and copartners in the promise of Christ Jesus through the Gospel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lessons the Magi Teach<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today is a feast in which we can learn from the wise men about the importance of seeking God like they did; if they can perceive his presence through the alignment of brightly shining stars \u2014 as the renowned playwright Sister Mary Margaret Hope has recently helped us all to ponder more astrophysically \u2014\u00a0then with the far greater indications God has given us \u2014\u00a0his word, his incarnation and life on earth, the witness of the saints, and the tabernacle lamp as a modern Star indicating his presence \u2014 we too are called ardently to seek the Lord\u2019s face like a deer passionately longing for flowing streams or a dry weary land without water zealously thirsting for hydration. We can learn from them that life is meant to be a pilgrimage, a journey of faith, one that we\u2019re called not to make alone. We can learn likewise that we need guidance along this pilgrimage and that God always provides it. We can see how, like them, we need to accept God on his own terms and allow him to change our categories about God, man and power, like the wise men prostrated themselves before a baby straightjacketed in swaddling clothes lying in an ancient animal trough. We can grasp with them the meaning of true adoration, which involves not just giving costly gifts, but most importantly the gift of ourselves in prostrated homage before the real abiding presence of God. And we can perceive with them how the encounter with Christ is meant to change us, so that every time we come into his presence, we, like the Magi, leave by \u201canother route,\u201d leave differently than we arrived, converted more and more to the King\u2019s way and categories, changed for the better to the life of faith, and following no longer our own way or following Jesus no longer at a distance but Jesus\u2019 own path of humble love up close.<\/p>\n

Seeking the Mercy Seat<\/strong><\/p>\n

But insofar as we are celebrating this great Solemnity during the extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, there\u2019s a special summons for us to enter into this mystery from the perspective of the baby Jesus as the epiphany of God\u2019s mercy in the world. Since Christmas Day we\u2019ve been bellowing, \u201c\u2018Hark!\u2019 The Herald Angels sing glory to the newborn King!,\u201d and pondering in that diminutive universal ruler \u201cPeace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.\u201d We been kneeling in front of the manger intoning the gentle melody of \u201cO Holy Child of Bethlehem,\u201d and repeatedly saying to the divine Babe, \u201cdescend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.\u201d Jesus has come as mercy mild, on a rescue and reconciliation mission, descending to us to cleanse us, to enter us, and to lead us to rebirth and resurrection. Today on the feast of the Epiphany, we celebrate the fact that this mercy is meant not just for us but for everyone, that all peoples are called to adore Christ in his mercy, to bring him gifts, tribute and homage. We grasp that everyone, and not just Jews or those who have already come to know the fulfillment of the Jewish Messianic hopes in Christ, are intended by God to become \u201ccoheirs\u201d and \u201cco-partners\u201d in the promise of Christ through the Gospel. This Jubilee is a time in which we\u2019re all called to seek the Lord\u2019s mercy like the wise men sought the newborn king, to go together on an exodus from where we are to where God is, to accept him and the mind-blowing reality of his unending mercy on his own terms, to worship him in his mercy with all we are and have, and to be thoroughly changed by that mercy that we will go out and change the world with the power of that mercy.<\/p>\n

In one of the great hymns Christians have sung for generations on this Solemnity, \u201cAs with Gladness Men of Old,\u201d we are led with the Magi to ponder the manifestation of God\u2019s mercy in the baby held lovingly in the arms of the Mother of Mercy. \u201cAs with joyful steps they sped to that lowly manger bed,\u201d we sing, \u201cthere to bend the Him whom heav\u2019n and earth adore, so may we with willing feet ever seek the mercy seat!\u201d That mercy seat is found not primarily in an ancient cave but in the heavenly Jerusalem, the seat that the Letter to the Hebrews mentions, when \u2014\u00a0after describing that we have a High Priest who took on our nature in all things but sin and who is able to sympathize with all our weaknesses and temptations \u2014 it summons us \u201cconfidently [to] approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.\u201d That same celestial mercy seat is what the opening Collect of this Mass likewise alluded to when we turned to the Father and asked him on this day on which he revealed his only Begotten Son to the nations by the guidance of a star to \u201cgrant in your mercy that we, who know you already by faith, may be brought to behold the beauty of your sublime glory,\u201d the glory of Christ\u2019s triumphant throne at the Father\u2019s eternal right. The hymn \u201cAs With Gladness\u201d continues interpreting the gifts within a prism of mercy. \u201cAs they offer\u2019d gifts most rare at that manger rude and bare, so may we with holy joy, pure and free from sin\u2019s alloy, all our costliest treasures bring, Christ, to thee, our heavenly king.\u201d And then we pray for that adoration to transform the direction of our life. \u201cHoly Jesus! Every day, keep us in the narrow way; and when earthly things are past, bring our ransomed souls at last, where they need no star to guide, where no clouds thy glory hide!\u201d<\/p>\n

Making this Feast Practical in the Jubilee Year<\/strong><\/p>\n

How can we make practical these lessons about the manifestation of the Lord\u2019s mercy and what God wants to be, with his help, our epiphany as wise men and wise women, wise priests and religious and mothers of infants in response to it? I\u2019d like to focus on a few ways, all of which come fundamentally from the way Jesus gave the epiphany of his mercy to St. Faustina Kowalska in the 1930s in Krakow and asked her to bring to the nations what he revealed. As Catholics we know that we don\u2019t have to believe in private revelations with the faith with which we believe in what God has revealed to us in the Bible and Sacred Tradition, but nevertheless the Church has given a seal of approval as worthy of belief what St. Faustina transcribed in her diary and, in canonizing her, the Church has manifested total confidence in her holy veracity. If we start with the premise that Jesus really did appear to her and reveal the depths of his plan of mercy toward her, then I think that if we\u2019re going to get our coordinates for this Year of Mercy, we ought to take them from the one who revealed himself to St. Faustina as \u201cMercy Incarnate.\u201d And so I think on this Feast Day, we ponder four takeaways.<\/p>\n