A Light for the Nations

Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany

The word “epiphany” has entered our modern English language but has a completely different meaning than the original Greek word. If someone comes up to you today and says, “I just had an epiphany,” you would understand that he or she had a new idea. However, the original meaning of the word is “manifestation” or “revelation.” At any rate, today we do not celebrate an epiphany. Today we celebrate the Epiphany, the manifestation or revelation of the babe of Bethlehem as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy that we hear from the Prophet Isaiah this morning. Jesus, the light of the world, has been revealed to Gentiles who followed a star to the manger of Bethlehem.

Jesus came to one specific people, in one specific place, and at one specific time. We have often heard the children of Israel called “the chosen people.” Are we to understand that God was playing favorites? No, because the whole purpose of revealing himself to that specific people was to reveal himself to the whole world through them so that the whole world would know the true God. Indeed, they have paid a steep price for the privilege of being his chosen people. If you look at the history of hatred and persecution of the Jews, you will see no profit in being God’s chosen people.

When Christ was born in Bethlehem, he came to less than 1% of the world’s population. They were the only people who worshiped the true God. The rest of the world was in darkness. Today almost half the world knows the true God, mainly because of Christian missionaries. Six hundred years before the incarnation, Isaiah the prophet announced that there will be a time for Jerusalem – that is, Israel – to “rise up in splendor because her light has come and the glory of the Lord has shown upon her.” That light is Jesus Christ, and he is the light not just for Israel but for all the nations. In the Gospel of St. Matthew, we hear the story of how Jesus was revealed to the Gentile nations in the persons of the three Magi.

The second reading for today’s liturgy consists of a few verses from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. In these few verses, St. Paul explains that he had been asked by God to reveal God’s grace, once given for the benefit of the Jews, but now expanded to the Gentile nations whom he calls “co-heirs.” Because of the light of Jesus Christ, the entire world has been invited to be members of Christ’s body and copartners in the promise of Christ through the Gospel.

Because God designed the human heart to seek truth and goodness and beauty and love, the whole world sought God. God is everything that the human heart seeks. However, the human race was unable to find that for which they sought. They were unable to find God. Then God sought the world and found it. Human religions were many different roads up the mountain, but God made a different kind of road, a road which came down the mountain. Because human beings were unable to find God, God sought them out and became one of them. Through God’s grace, revealed first by the apostles and then by their successors, the entire world is now able to find God, to find truth and goodness and beauty and love.

Through Jesus Christ, the world’s only knowledge of the true God and of God’s will for humanity, divinely revealed through Judaism, was now ready to convert the whole world to the true God. It was destined and designed by God that way: to explode suddenly, like a supernova, into the whole universe. Christ is that supernova. Judaism was the womb; Jesus is the baby. The womb was for the baby, and the baby is for the whole world. God’s plan worked. Ironically, the whole world learned of the true God through Christian missionaries. The irony lies in the fact that Judaism has spurned the words of their prophet Isaiah because they are still waiting for the Messiah. Today’s feast celebrates the fact that over half the world now bears the title “Christian,” because God has been revealed in Jesus Christ. The Gospel tells us that the first Gentiles to seek and find God found a baby in Bethlehem. Now, the light of which Isaiah speaks has illumined the entire world.