“I had an epiphany. . .” It’s an expression people use when they gain some clarity of mind, or some new insight, or some deeper understanding. Perhaps you’ve used the expression yourself. Well, at the Christmas Masses I had an epiphany, a sudden new realization that has changed me.
Every year, in every parish I have served, people show up in droves for the Christmas Masses. And for many years I’ve had this slight nagging unspoken thought that goes something like this: Where are all these people during the rest of the year? In fact, we priests have an expression: “C and E Catholics: meaning Christmas and Easter Catholics.”
This year, however, I had a different reaction, what I call “an epiphany.” I’ve now been in the parish long enough to look at the congregation of each of the Masses and see faces I know well and see all the time, as well as faces of people I have not seen for a goodly amount of time, but faces of people whose stories I know. I saw, besides you, people whose family has been ruptured by a divorce, families whose now-grown children went to school here, people who have been ill, people who have moved out of Boulder but came back here for Christmas Mass, and lots of people whose religious light has not yet been turned on.
What was missing in me this Christmas was any sense of judgment. Instead, what was in me was understanding and love: understanding people’s plights, their circumstances, their confusion, their struggles, their indifference, their standing point along the spectrum of religious awakening, and some of them living with longstanding destructive habits.
Epiphany means manifestation, or making some reality manifest, or apparent, or observable. And this Solemnity of the Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of this great mystery of our faith, the Incarnation, the En-fleshment of God, to the Magi, that is, to Gentiles, which means every other human being who is not Jewish, and that means most of us.
Part of our faith is that everyone who is baptized is a temple of the Holy Spirit and a member of the Body of Christ. In other words, we encounter the Lord Jesus in our own prayer, most sublimely in our Eucharist, and also in each other. What we have on Christmas is a fuller sense of who it is that makes up the Body of Christ, the Church. Some are passionate about the Lord, like you and me, and we know that "we cannot live without Sunday," without partaking in the Eucharist. Some, however, have terribly complicated lives, or are torn by conflicting desires, like desiring God and also desiring things that pull away from God. Some are feeling isolated or rejected or are confused, or are resentful and in need of healing, and so on.
Some have interpreted our faith as rules, as obligations, as duties, as something to be worn like a coat. For whatever has gone on in their lives, the veneer of the faith has not yet seeped into the marrow of their bones.
So, being judgmental of them seems now, in my epiphany, to be ludicrous. Now it seems more imperative than ever to assist them to know the Lord as He truly is, to know His love and forgiveness, and to perceive His calling to be more than superficially Catholic. We don’t need brighter people; after all, our parish and our county are filled to bursting with extremely bright and gifted people. Our challenge today in an age of superficiality is that we need deeper people, people who allow the grace of God to enter and dive into the depths of our souls and supply what our culture cannot: the meaning and purpose of Christ.
So, Lord, forgive me for many years of tsk, tsking in my heart of hearts the “C and E Catholics.” Instead, lead me and my flock to a point where we are available to You to make you more manifest in our lives so that those who are searching, like the Magi, may find in us – not judgment, but an encounter with You and with your understanding and patience and kindness. Give us the depth of soul to see in every human being another manifestation of You, Lord. And help us treat every human being as if he or she were You Yourself. In Your Holy Name, I pray.
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