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Letters Feast of the Epiphany
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The feast of the Epiphany celebrates the call of the Gentiles to salvation. In the gospel reading we hear how the magi came, not without difficulty, to offer homage to the infant Jesus. They were from a far distant land, out of nowhere, as it were, but, through God’s guidance, they were led to the "newborn king" in Bethlehem. Somehow this child was of immense importance to them. In the epiphany narrative, Matthew teaches us that Jesus is the one source of salvation and that this salvation is intended for the whole world. There is one plan of salvation and it applies to everybody. Epiphany celebrates the unity and universality of God’s plan.
That’s what our apostolic letter talks about. The letter to the Ephesians (which we will read at length later in this year of the lectionary cycle) is about the Church. In the section we read on this day, Paul is talking about his role in preaching the good news, and, in that context, enunciates and underlines the themes of the feast.
He says, in effect, "I, together with other spokesmen for God, have been given a mission for your benefit. That mission is to make public the secret of God’s plan that has been revealed to us. It is something that has not been manifested until now. That secret plan now made known to us, is that salvation - belonging to God’s family, being members of the body of Christ, becoming eligible for the gifts that Christ offers - is directed to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews."
There is one salvation, salvation in Christ, and that salvation is universal. Everybody is called. Everybody qualifies. Nobody is excluded from God’s offer of intimacy. That’s what we celebrate at Epiphany: the one call of all people of all times to share in the one saving life of Christ.
"That’s nice," we think. "It’s good of God to include us twentieth century American Catholics in His plan of salvation." But working out the implications of the unity and universality of salvation for twentieth century Americans is not without its challenges. The main challenge, the main obstacle to the proper assimilation of what we celebrate today is particularism, the tendency to let narrower and smaller realities get in the way of our appreciation of and response to God’s universal plan for salvation. We tend to forget that the flip side of God’s inclusion of us in His plan is the inclusion of everybody else as well.
One manifestation of unhealthy particularism is nationalism. Our nation is better than your nation. Defending our rights is more important than anything else. The love and care we are invited to have for others who have been called to share God’s life, i.e., all of human kind, takes second place to national interest. We see signs of this when our country enters an armed conflict. Almost spontaneously we presume that we are right and "they" are wrong. One wonders sometimes whether most of us do not see ourselves as Americans first and Christian believers second. This is not to say that patriotism has no place in the Christian life, but that our love for our country has to be practiced in the broader context of our love for God.
Then there is the ecumenical question. Thanks to human error, differing approaches to theology, and historical circumstances, including nationalism, the one church of Christ is divided into many particular Christian denominations. Vatican II teaches us that the Church founded by Christ "subsists in the Catholic Church" (Lumen Gentium, no. 8) but it acknowledges a relationship with other Christians "who do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter" (ibid., no. 14). It points out elsewhere (Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 1) however, that, while "many Christian communions present themselves to men as the true heritage of Jesus Christ, ... their convictions clash and their paths diverge as though Christ Himself were divided. Without doubt, this discord openly contradicts the will of Christ." A divided and particularized Christianity is not part of God’s plan. It is almost impossible to imagine how a reunited Christianity could come about, yet that is what we are expected to work and pray for.
Finally, there is the particularism of the parish. The parish is the most common unit of the Church’s corporate life, but it is necessarily part of something bigger: the local diocesan church and the Church universal. Often Catholics seem to think that the whole plan of salvation is centered in their congregation, and that concern for the wider church is optional or even counterproductive. Sometimes we seem so attentive to the demands of our parish that we have no energy left to pay attention to the Church.
God’s call, God’s salvation, God’s Church is more embracing than we sometimes think. The feast of Epiphany invites all of us to widen our horizons.
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Conversation Questions:
What difference does the universality of God’s call to salvation make to me?
How does my parish look beyond its own interests?
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