Epiphany of Our Lord, Jesus Christ 2007

[Fr.Paul Weinberger]

Homily by:
Father Paul Weinberger
Saint William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
Epiphany of Our Lord, Jesus Christ
January 8, 2007

It was not made known to men in other generations as it has now be revealed to his holy Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body and partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit

Amen

The star guided the Wise Men successfully to Bethlehem, a single star. This group, these men were lead by the light of that one star. Last night, with a single star as a symbol, there was no success. The group got close but close ain’t good enough! The Cowboys lost. God’s Team? Go figure; someone needs to call God and let Him know. They had the coffee mug, the t-shirt and even the hat…so sad! If only someone had said a prayer but I don’t think they pray since Coach Landry died.

If you look on the cover of the bulletin, evidentially a cowboy was there. One of the Three Kings evidentially came from the West, Texas to be specific. See the attendant taking off the spurs?

This painting can be viewed here
http://www.italianstay.com/italyinforma ... agi800.jpg

This is the Adoration of the Magi by Gentile Da Fabriano; he did it in 1423, which is the last time the Cowboys went to the Super Bowl. [Laughter] Gentile Da Fabriano has an interesting name. On the back page of your bulletin I have some terms for you, the Jews, the Chosen People, and the non-Jews, the Gentiles. If you take the “s” off Gentiles you get the artist’s name, Gentile. This is his most famous painting.

Anyone who was not a Jew was a Gentile or part of the Nations…peoples. These are different terms and when you come across these in the Bible such as Gentiles, peoples, nations and pagans, it is referring to us. All of us are included in those terms and the three figures of the Wise Men are our spiritual ancestors, being allowed to worship along side St. Joseph, Our Lady, the newborn King, Jesus Christ.

This day, Epiphany is a manifestation of God to the nations. Instead of revealing Himself only and specifically to the Chosen People, which are the Jews, His revelation is to all men. The fact that God wishes all men to be saved we take for granted but it a relatively new teaching in the last 2000 years.

The Second Reading today says that the Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body and partners. There is no such thing as a co-partner, partner. St. Anselm of Canterbury, centuries after this Epiphany, this manifestation, wrote “fides quaerens intellectum”, which translates to “faith seeking understanding”.

These wise Men, these men of great learning had faith and they sought understanding. We claim them as our spiritual ancestors but sometimes I wonder if they would claim us as their spiritual descendants because we fail to seek understanding. We have faith and like so many things we take it for granted. If something is not readily apparent, understandable, or as they say today, instant, then it is thrown down and forgotten because it is too hard or something must be wrong with the teaching.

Look on the back of the bulletin again and you see dates at the top. I put these together for you.

December 8th, The Immaculate Conception and December 25th, The Virgin Birth of Jesus. You can read the rest. January 7th should be January 6th because that is when the rest of the Church celebrates the Epiphany. I look to see that changed in the very near future. Another Holy Day of Obligation laid upon the shoulders of overworked Christians…or something like that! You watch because the Greek Orthodox and other Christians celebrate the Epiphany on January 6th for the good of the Church and for unity in the Church. Just watch and see; we will go back to that. We have a long and glorious tradition of letting it float around in the last forty years. Before that everyone celebrated the Epiphany on the same day and as I said, we will probably go back to that very soon.

Look at December 25th, the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem. The Church teaches that Our Lady remained a Virgin before He was born, during His birth and after His birth. The Church also contends that Our Lady did not suffer the intense pains of labor, childbirth. I mentioned that last week. Then again, when faced with a teaching like this something that, if we are honest, we spent about ten seconds, if that, looking at this the totality of our lives.

“All of a sudden it doesn’t strike me the right way; I will just throw it down and walk away from because I don’t believe that!”

Well, it is kind of a central tenet of our faith. We act as if we are experts and I am the worst. Go ahead, ask me about any book of the Bible, chapter and verse and I will tell you what it…No! That is why I have a Bible and it even has the little tabs on it so I can find what I am looking for easier. We don’t have the Bible memorized. Maybe we have parts memorized but I am still working on the Our Father.

On the back page of the bulletin I have provided Isaiah Chapter 66 verse 7. Have you ever read verse 7?

Before she comes to labor she gives birth; before the pains come upon her she safely delivers a male child.”

“Father, I have never seen that before!”

Yes, as you and I have spent hours pouring over text after text in the Bible and closely scrutinizing everything we never came across that! Sorry, this is not the truth! We don’t find time to study the Bible and prophecies as the Wise Men of Old did. So, when we come up against something that we have never seen, it is somehow suspect because in the ten minutes that I have dedicated this month to studying my faith I didn’t come across that. Interesting though, isn’t it? And if you think I just cherry-picked it from some favorite Bible of my own…it is from the USCCB web site. It is the Bible they have online and the same Bible that brought us these readings today, the one that mentions co-partners in the second reading.

Isaiah is the Old Testament book most mentioned in the New Testament by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and on the lips of Our Lord. Second…it is the Psalms. So Isaiah is not some throwaway esoteric book that doesn’t apply to our faith. Think about it! Think of the Virgin Birth of Christ!

“How did that happen? That is a little too fast for my liking.”

Oh really? This Feast of the Epiphany is always linked to tomorrow’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord when Jesus is Baptized; not so that Baptism will do for Him as it does for us when it takes away Original Sin, and in so doing makes us part of God’s Holy Family. He was baptized so that He would bless the waters of Baptism and so that you and I could be baptized.

If you have a problem with the Virgin birth and don’t understand it, then how do you understand this?

I baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

To baptize, those words are used and water is poured three times over the forehead or a person is immersed. Now, that is just water we use for the dishes or to wash the car and I am supposed to believe that after that Original Sin is just taken away? That is an element of faith too. We get real picky about our elements of faith and our mysteries of faith but that is a mystery of faith! In fact, Abraham had it more difficult.

The mark of the covenant with Abraham was circumcision. The Book of Genesis says Abraham was about one hundred years old and that day that God made the covenant with him, Abraham and all the men with him were circumcised. That is the mark of the Old Law; it is not a prerequisite for Christians. In fact, it is interesting to see that the mark that was made in circumcision on the body prepares the way for the mark that Christ would make on the soul in Baptism. Even if a Christian, God forbid, should reject his faith, when he goes before God to be judged at death, there will be that mark on his soul of Baptism; it is indelible; the same kind of mark that comes to us through Confirmation and Holy Orders for deacons, priests, and bishops. The mark is there and by the eyes of faith and the teachings of the Apostles and the Church, we know it is there, really and truly there taking away Original Sin and making us members of the Holy Family, who is Jesus, Mary, and St. Joseph. This makes us part of the fulfillment God made to Abraham, centuries before Christ.

I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore.

That promise is fulfilled through Christ. Yes, Christ is a descendant of Abraham and we, through Christ are part of that promise which God made to Abraham. Through the Sacrament of Baptism we are truly brothers and sisters of Christ and adopted sons and daughters of God the Father.

The fact is, it takes a lot to go through all of this. Look at those feasts; the Feasts here at Christmas are very similar to the Feasts surrounding Easter, which are Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Forty days later we have the Ascension and ten days later we celebrate Pentecost. Our heads swim at the thought of having to meditate on these things, consider them so fast and think about them all the time. Whoa, whoa, whoa…slow down! EXACTLY! We have to meditate upon these mysteries of faith in order to grow in our understanding, following the example of these Three Wise Men. “Faith seeking understanding”, as St. Anslem wrote.

Our faith has to be greater than the faith of the Jews at the time of Jesus. Jesus said,

Unless you have faith greater than the scribes and Pharisees you will not enter into the Kingdom of God.

I will mention the Pharisee closest to me. Last week I mentioned prayer, and that we didn’t pray enough in 2006, 05, 04, and on back. I didn’t pray enough and I know that, but neither did you. On the last day of December I decided to start 2007 in prayer using small steps. Apart from water, any time you eat or drink anything like chips, sodas, donuts or whatever, we say “grace before meals”, then “grace after meals”. Fr. Denis O’Brien said that anytime we fail to give thanks to God for what he has provided, it is gluttony!

So, after delivering this Homily at every Mass last week, after the 6pm Mass on New Year’s Eve I went over to the rectory and I was very tired. I poured a big glass of milk and there was a piece of fudge there so I ate it. By the time I finished I realized…I didn’t say grace! Of course, if a tree falls in the woods and no one sees…if a Pharisee does this and no one sees it…But by saving grace I realized that last Sunday I’d said, “Starting tomorrow?” Ha! 2007! Starting tomorrow! Pharisee! If we don’t convict ourselves we run into the temptation of staying at that level and that is not enough. To be “resembling” a Jew wasn’t enough to get you into Heaven at the time of Jesus and He said so! He would know!

The greatest Jew at the time of the Birth of Jesus was thought to be the messiah, King Herod. I left out December 28th, which is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Herod is the one who slaughtered the young boys around Bethlehem that were two years old and younger just because they resembled Christ. King Herod was thought to be the messiah that God promised to send by most people in his day, especially the Jews. In fact, the temple that King Solomon had built…if you want to talk about riding high in the Jewish history, King Solomon was right there next to his father, King David. King Solomon built the temple; it had been destroyed and was in ruin. King Herod came back to Jerusalem, rebuilt the temple and didn’t rebuild it exactly as King Solomon arranged it but even improved it. It seemed impossible. He had the priests in the temple in his pocket, so to speak, and they would listen to King Herod. Again, he was thought to be the greatest Jew of his day. There was just one problem…he wasn’t a Jew! I hate it when that happens! Right? He had the t-shirt, the coffee mug and the cap…Father whispers…he wasn’t a Jew!

Look what Herod does when told about the fulfillment of the Jewish prophecies from the Jewish Prophets. It says in the gospel today,

When King Herod heard this he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

King Herod was infuriated, or as they say today, insensed. He was really mad at what he heard because he liked being King and this was an usurper. His response was not that of someone seeking understanding. He is a great example, here at the beginning of the year, of what I can be any day of the year. Where is the faith? Where is the seeking of understanding? If I get a headache…and I am not prone to getting them but giving them…but if I get a headache I automatically think, “brain cancer’, right? Headache = brain cancer!

” Well, do you have a history of brain cancer or cancer?”

“No!”

How many times do we look for the most extreme explanation, like getting an x-ray just because my arm hurts or maybe I remember that I slept on it wrong last night and save myself a few hundred dollars, right? When something goes wrong at work or on the highway, I all of a sudden throw myself down and throw a fit, just like King Herod. He was greatly troubled and he wanted to make sure everyone else was troubled too. He was anxious so everyone else was going to be anxious right along side him. If he saw someone that was not anxious, we can probably guess what happened to his or her head. King Herod was a monster and if we choose, we can be monsters too by being silent or being vocal.

“The people at work know what I want and just look at that! I am just not going to talk to them for a while. And I am going to give my spouse the silent treatment.”

What ever it is, this is responding to life as King Herod and he is a great temptation every day for me and probably for you too; we are not living as we should.

At the time of Jesus and His public teaching there were many people who were interested in the Jewish prophecies and teachings but they didn’t want to convert. They were called Proselytes of the Gates. The Jews would allow them to listen to the teachings of the prophets and Moses. These people were all around the Jewish empire and they would listen intently but wouldn’t take the step of living according to the dietary laws of the Jews or allow themselves to be circumcised.

This helps to explain why at the time of Jesus, Ascension and then Pentecost ten days later, why so many came into the Church so quickly. Yes, it was the grace of God. The grace of God working through the Apostles taught that the Christians did not have to live under the Old Covenant, under the old law and its prescription. The mark that God desired was the mark of Baptism on our souls and this is what the Apostles taught. We see at the beginnings of the teaching of the Apostles, great numbers entering the Church; they were already primed and ready to go, but when they heard this Good News they flooded in.
If you read the Acts of the Apostles, you see how in the Council of Jerusalem St. Peter and Paul had words over this and we of course know who won.

We are not doing our best to be a light to the nations and do for them what is necessary to live our faith in such a way that people not only want to learn more, they want to become Catholic. They see the difference in our lives and the way we treat one another and so they want to seek and find and understand what we believe. So, it is going to take prayer and I want you to think about prayer again over the next week because I will be speaking on prayer in the coming weeks as well.

Think about what every father tells a son when the son is at the age for college or business. The father always tells them that it wouldn’t be bad for them to learn a trade. Yes, the son is going to college but learning a trade is important because if something happens and college doesn’t work out they have something to fall back on. This is good counsel because some of those trades make a very nice living. Now think about the Rosary and vocal prayer as a trade, that will get you started and it is always something on which you can fall back.

The Rosary or vocal prayer is going to lead us or open the door to mental prayer, ok? Maybe you have a favorite prayer book or maybe your favorite book is the Bible and scripture or maybe it is the Rosary. You can incorporate all three if you wish but the idea is to move from vocal pray, prayer with words, to mental prayer. Again, as I mentioned last week, it is good to have and image WHEN you are distracted, not IF you are distracted. The devil is going to try and distract you and me in prayer and so if there is an image in front of you, you have something to help you concentrate. You can use a Crucifix or good holy pictures to help you.

You start your prayer or your rosary and you expect to move from the verbal prayer on to the mental prayer. Now, this is not the Rosary prayed as a family or with others and I mentioned that last week. That is good as well but this is something to attempt alone and in silence. So that no one is too extreme you can get an oven timer and set it to thirty minutes. You know, the same thing we do when we are watching television.

“Let me see, I am going to set that for 6 ½ hours and when it goes off I will know that my time has expired”

No, on this oven timer just set it for thirty minutes because you don’t want people thinking you are Amish. You are not Amish, ok? Then you start your Rosary. As you go through the Joyful Mysteries thinking about the Birth of Christ, God will visit you; He will visit you! The saints tell us that there are three things that He is going to get us to consider. The first way is His love for us; maybe in a flash He will show us His love. The second way is to show us our sins; not returning His love for…that is called sin! The third way is showing us the blood of His Son in the Passion; it is going to be one of those or some of those. As we are praying along and concentrating on the words and thinking about the mystery and all of a sudden, Knock, knock, knock. God comes to visit us. Now, when God is visiting we don’t just keep mumbling prayers right past Him as though we are passing someone on the road. This is the whole point of vocal prayer; to lead us to where these three Wise Men are standing, in front of God. This will lead us to deepen our faith and grown in understanding. God knows what is needed by you at that time an it would be wrong of us and ridiculous of us in the extreme if we just shoot past Him because we have to finish the rosary. If you spend thirty minutes praying the rosary and God visits you and you don’t complete the whole Rosary, take the Rosary and put it down. It doesn’t have an alarm on it that is going to go off in public and say,

“You didn’t say the whole Rosary.”

It is not going to embarrass us in public. The rosary is there to lead us. Verbal prayer keeps us from being lazy and you know how lazy those people from Dallas can be, right? Right! Not in Greenville, but those people in Dallas are notorious for this. No, everywhere! Telling ourselves that we can’t pray is the easiest cop out right? So, this is a way of moving past grace before and after meals, to the kind of prayer that seeks understanding. That kind of prayer has to bear fruit in the way we treat each other so that other people see the light and the difference in our lives.

“ I notice you don’t curse and that when we are viewing porn on the Internet at work, you don’t join in. I notice that there is a difference in your life. Oh, that’s right, you are one of those Catholics aren’t you?”

And being Catholic means that you are praying and studying your faith and seeking understanding. In this way we cash in, if you will, on the fact that we are heirs and partners. In the First Reading it says that the wealth of the nations will be poured out upon us and that the sea will give up its riches if we pray. Conversation with God will give us riches beyond our wildest imaginations but we have so confined God into our own little space where we like Him to be and no where else. The Wise Men are bowing down in adoration.

“God, please touch every aspect of my life, of my thoughts and actions.”

These are our spiritual ancestors only if we acknowledge them by following their lead. Perhaps Herod is your spiritual ancestor…I pray for you. If we lose it, it is ours to lose but to say that God has not revealed Himself to us, is blasphemy.

It was not made known to men in other generations as it has now be revealed to his holy Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body and partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit

Amen