Epiphany of the Lord, January 5, 2025

2025 Jan 5 SUN: EPIPHANY OF THE LORD S Is 60: 1-6/ Ps 72: 1-2. 7-8. 10-11. 12-13/ Eph 3: 2-3a. 5-6/ Mt 2: 1-12

I want to start by looking at two words. It seems to me that more recently there has been some confusion between these two words, and I think it is helpful for all of us to maintain a distinction between them.

The words are epiphany and insight. Very often, and I believe this is the source of confusion, you will hear people say from time to time, "Oh, I've just had an epiphany." Well, I think they're really talking about an insight, and I want to explain the distinction that I see.

As we said at the beginning of Mass, epiphany means manifestation. It means something external that people can see.

An insight, however, is something that goes on within us when we are looking at what appears to be the same reality we've always known, but somehow we see something quite different about it.

And that is a change within ourselves. I think that insight is really the proper word for that concept.

And in the Word of God today, we see that St. Paul is saying that an epiphany is an external event happening, the manifestation of the Savior to the nations.

This external event prompts insight. And what is the insight St. Paul says? Gentiles, the nations, the foreigners, they are coheirs with the Jewish people. They also receive the gift of salvation in Jesus.

Really, the Epiphany is a time for us to be aware of an insight we probably receive many times during our earthly lifespan. And that insight has to do with breaking down something that we tend to suppose. That is that we look at our own people, the people we are familiar with, who look and talk and believe like us. And then we think of foreigners and happily, because of the great increase in our day of communications and travel, we are much more in contact with peoples of other nations. And we have this insight that amazingly, they are just as human as we are. And it's a kind of an insight that has us saying, "Oh, why didn't I know that before?" Or, "Why didn't I think of that before?" But it's an extremely important insight.

And we see what happens in the words of Isaiah today. "You shall be radiant at what you see, your hearts shall throb and overflow, because you begin to understand that people of all nations are a gift to us." We build one another up. And that's certainly a good alternative to what I would call caricaturing people of other nations. And indeed, I believe that is a major source of the troubles we have in our world community: that we don't see other peoples as being quite human. And then we have a pretext for doing inhuman things to them.

So this is the thing that can carry us through another year, as we reflect on the mysteries of the Epiphany. There has been an external manifestation which causes us to rethink what's going on in our hearts and to develop the insight that far more than the symbolic gifts which the Magi gave to Jesus, we have gifts in one another as fellow members of the People of God.