Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany, C, Vigil
January 4, 2025
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.4.25_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
* Happy New Year! This is Msgr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, as the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, his “manifestation” to all the nations represented by the wise men coming from afar.
* There are many angles by which we can approach this great encounter. We can focus on the meaning of the homage or adoration the Magi give Jesus when they arrive. We can meditate on the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We can ponder the significance of the star.
* But insofar as I have just begun full-time my new work as National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies, I’d like to look at it from the perspective of how Christ is the light Isaiah prophesies in Sunday’s first reading who would shine over all peoples, so that all nations might walk by his light and kings of various peoples by his shining radiance. Jesus is that Light from Light who came into the world to illumine not just the Jewish people, not just those who would eventually hear the Gospel and become Christians, but all peoples everywhere.
* Over the course of the centuries, this focus on the wise men coming from afar as representatives of all the non-Jewish peoples of every nation and all time is the most traditional way by which Christians have looked at the Solemnity of the Epiphany. The prophets Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had all announced God’s intention to be a savior of all peoples, but the visit of these non-Jewish magi was understood by the early Christians as the beginning of the fulfillment of that plan. They were the first but certainly not the last in a great procession prophesied that has taken place over the centuries as non-Jews from the east and the west, the north and the south, have come to Bethlehem to find in the newborn Jesus their light, salvation and Savior.
* The wise men were, first, those who were seeking God arduously through God’s first epiphany, which is the manifestation of God in creation. They were seeking him in the stars God had made. Following that light with a small-L, they were longing for the Light with a capital-L. Theirs is an extraordinary witness. Perhaps moved by the ancient Sybilline prophecies that Michelangelo depicted in the Sistine Chapel, or even by Balaam’s prophecy from the Book of Numbers, “A star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Nm 24: 17), when they saw the star at its rising, they not only interpreted that God was trying to communicate something to them in general, but that God was specifically heralding the birth of the newborn King in the east, who would be a universal king. 2000 years ago, in the deserts of the Middle East and on the seas, people, we know, were highly dependent on the fixed stars in the sky as references for their direction. They firmly believed that God had made them this way for that reason. Whenever anything happened in the sky that was new — like the appearance of a comet, or meteor shower, or a planet’s or star’s shining more brightly — the ancients thought that it had to bear some message from the creator of the heavens. When they saw the star of Bethlehem at its rising, they didn’t respond just as curious astrologers but as those who hungered to find what they had long through their studies sought.
Episode: https://catholicpreaching.com/wp/epiphany-c-conversations-with-consequences-podcast-january-4-2025/
Podcast: https://catholicpreaching.com/wp/category/audio-homily/podcast/
