January 6

The Epiphany of the Lord

Solemnity (moved to the Sunday between Jan. 2 and Jan. 8)

Scripture Readings

Click here to find the daily readings for this day.

Reflection on Today’s Feast

By Fr. Dennis Baker, SJ

I’m a great fan of Ken Burn’s 1994 Emmy Award-winning documentary Baseball.  If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a truly encyclopedic study of the history of the game.  It’s terrific, especially if you like baseball or history, or both.  In what was then the final installment in 1994, Cuban historian Manuel Marquez-Sterling talks about his love for both baseball and opera.  He says that his joy for both of them is that they are both epiphanic arts.  In opera, there is a lot of tedium, as the audience waits for the aria.  Then he says,

“Now you go to a baseball game and observe what happens.  There is no action whatsoever.  There is continued tedium.  And then suddenly, [the batter] hits the ball, and that is the epiphany.  It shows forth.  Everything comes at that time.  It’s a moment of great action.” 

A good retirement for Dr. Marquez-Sterling would be a job at Lincoln Center in the winter, and at a ballpark in the summer. 

Opera, baseball, and epiphanies.  Today’s feast is about the many ways in which God has shown more about who God is, especially though the incarnation of Christ.  The word “epiphany” comes from the Greek word ἐπιφάνεια, which means “manifestation,” or “to appear.” 

What are some of these moments for you, personally?  Maybe a moment of close, intimate prayer.  Perhaps something you learned in school that changed the way you thought about the world.  Maybe the way your parents love you.  Maybe the epiphany comes with the gratitude we feel when someone we love, who has been suffering for a long time, finally goes to God.  Maybe a simple cup of coffee or meal with a friend you’ve known for a long time.  Sometimes it’s a nice walk in the woods or the beach, or enjoying life in a great metropolis.

Priests have these moments, too, you know.  People in the pews and schools in which I’ve worked have been my moments of epiphany.  They are my epiphany of God’s grace in the world.  Here’s what I mean:  I don’t know what brings these emails to your inboxes, but I admit that I do wonder.  But no matter what, when a guy comes to know that he should apply to the Jesuits—or that he should not—I am truly filled with the grace of knowing that God is alive, as such a decision cannot happen without God’s guiding influence. 

Along with my brother Jesuits, I know that I am not alone in my imperfections, and I am drawn to even greater prayer so that I might be the slightest bit of an example to other people—just as so many holy men and women are to me.  When I hand out communion, I see faces of all ages, ready to partake in a mystery two millennia old, and I am moved beyond words to stand in such a privileged place, and say such privileged words.  When I hear confessions, I am overcome by the efforts of people out there in the world striving to do the right thing and I am humbled by their holiness and their honesty.  It inspires me to be more holy, and it helps me strive to be more honest myself.   In these moments, I know we’re all in this together, and I am so grateful to have such a great view of something so amazing.  And often enough, these moments—these epiphanies—happen when I least expect them. 

Whatever the epiphanic moments are in our lives, they happen because we keep showing up, and bringing things before the Lord.  They happen because even when our faith is challenged, or when we have doubts, or when we’re angry with God, or ashamed of ourselves, or when life is just plain hard…we keep showing up to pray.  We may not even know why we do it, but the simple act of people together in prayer is a great grace, and a true sign of God at work in the word. 

These moments—these moments of spending time with people of faith, even people we may not know—these are epiphanies.  They show us that the miracle of God becoming human is the real deal.  And more than that, we can see it happen with immediacy.  If we’re observant, we can see it happen with the same crack of the bat that Manuel Marquez-Sterling talks about.

Prayer consists of the moments in which we have the opportunity to crack the door open ever so slightly to God, or maybe just a little but more than we did when we rolled out of bed.  And such generosity on our part is all God needs to create something within our very souls that is more beautiful than any opera, or more enjoyable than any day at the ballpark. 

 Happy Feast of the Epiphany!

Fr. Dennis Baker, SJ, is currently completing Tertianship in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. He has worked in primarily in high schools in Micronesia and New York City.