What a wonderful day we have in the Church’s calendar tomorrow! It is the feast of the Epiphany, which means “manifestation.” It is the day the Baby Jesus was first worshiped by the Gentiles in the persons of the Magi: Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. It is also the twelfth day of Christmas and it liturgically ends the Christmas season, and opens up a new year for the Church. In the Eastern Rites this is a holy day of obligation and it receives equal solemnity with Christmas.
It is also the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. In the East this feast is called “The Theophany,” for when Saint John baptized the Lamb of God the heavens were opened and the Holy Ghost appeared as a Dove over the head of Christ, and the Father’s voice was heard: “This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt.3:17). Theophany means “the manifestation of God.” In the early Church the feast was also called the “Festival of Lights.”
It is also the feast of the Marriage of Cana. This, too, was a theophany, for it was the occasion of Our Lord’s working His first public miracle. “They have no wine,” His mother told Him. Then, she said to the waiters: “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2:3-5). Our Lady knew that in saying these words she was launching her Son on His public mission for the redemption of the world.
Finally, as Brother André notes in his column above, it is the feast day of our soon saint-to-be, his holy patron, Blessed André of Mount Royal (Montreal).
I came across a sermon by Saint Gregory Nazianzen, which he delivered in Constantinople on the sixth day of January sixteen hundred years ago. It is posted on the Byzantine Catholic Church in America website. It may not be his full sermon, for it is very brief, but magnificent, as were all the sermons of the great father of the Church honored traditionally as “Doctor of Theologians.” Here it is:
“Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptized; let us also go down with Him, and rise with Him.
“John is baptizing when Jesus draws near. Perhaps He comes to sanctify His baptizer; certainly He comes to bury sinful humanity in the waters. He comes to sanctify the Jordan for our sake and in readiness for us; He Who is spirit and flesh comes to begin a new creation through Spirit and water.
“The Baptist protests; Jesus insists. Then John says: ‘I ought to be baptized by You.’ He is the lamp in the presence of the Sun, the voice in the presence of the woman in the presence of the Firstborn of all creation, the one who leapt in his mother’s womb in the presence of Him Who has already come and is to come again. ‘I ought to be baptized by You’; we should add: ‘and for You,’ for John is to be baptized in blood, washed clean like Peter, not only by the washing of his feet.
“Jesus rises from the waters; the world rises with Him. The heavens like Paradise with its flaming sword, closed by Adam for himself and his descendants, are rent open. The Spirit comes to Him as to an equal, bearing witness to His Godhead. A voice bears witness to Him from heaven, His place of origin. The Spirit descends in bodily form like a dove that so long ago announced the ending of the flood and so gives honor to the body that is one with God.
“Today let us do honor to Christ’s baptism and celebrate this feast in holiness. Be cleansed entirely and continue to be cleansed. Nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and salvation of humanity, for whom His every word and every revelation exist. He wants you to become a living force for all humanity, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of Him Who is the light of heaven. You are to enjoy more and more the pure and dazzling light of the Trinity, as now you have received – though not in its fullness – a ray of its splendor, proceeding from the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to Whom be glory and power now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen!”
