We must allow God's radiance to shine

January 7, 2007 -- The Epiphany of the Lord

By Bishop Robert Morneau

	Bishop Robert Morneau
	Questions for reflection: 1. How do you make God's light and love present in your daily life? 2. What is the secret of the Epiphany? 3. Do we have a right to smile?

There was no gold, frankincense, or myrrh under my Christmas tree this year but there was a gift of four CD's of poetry. Various poets - Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens - were recorded reading their own verse. One of my favorites was T. S. Eliot's rendition of his great poem, "The Journey of the Magi."

The poem puts flesh and blood around the journey of those travelers from the east. We read about the sore-footed camels, the cold winter night, the hostile cities and dirty villages, the interior doubts as to the worthwhileness of the trip. Eliot tells of how the Magi came upon a birth of a child and questioned whether they were experiencing birth or death. Later, upon returning to their own land, the Magi were no longer at ease having experienced a new dispensation at Bethlehem.

But we have another poet and prophet, Isaiah the prophet, who also has a story to tell. His vision is one of light and glory and splendor; his vision is one in which all nations will abandon their darkness and come into the light. The poet/prophet is communicating the saving power of God that causes hearts to throb and voices to break forth in praise. For us of the new dispensation, we know that it is Jesus the Christ who fulfills Isaiah's vision. It is to Jesus that gold and frankincense arrive from Sheba and Midian and Ephah.

In his own right, St. Paul is poetic in that he uses language to engage the heart and the imagination. Paul mentions a secret and immediately that catches our interest. In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, we read: "A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician." For St. Paul, his secret was not a burden but rather the good news of Jesus. It was God's plan that all people, Gentile and Jew, now share in the promise of the life of grace.

As the author Montaurier comments: "One cannot come into possession of joy and keep secrets." The Magi, Isaiah, and St. Paul all experienced a joy that transformed their lives. But it was not a private joy, given for just a few. It was God's universal love revealed in Jesus that had to be shared with the whole world. Thus, on this feast of the Epiphany, all of us, the benefactors of the good news, are called to be evangelists, instruments, and agents of God's secret, of God's divine joy.

But to T.S. Eliot: "We had the experience but missed the meaning" (cf. "The Dry Salvages"). As we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, God-made-manifest-in-Jesus, we must ask what its meaning is for us. It is so much more than information, though the truth of this special revelation is significant. The Epiphany finds ultimate meaning to the extent that we allow the feast to share our lives. We must become epiphanies to others of God's love, compassion, and forgiveness. We must journey, like the Magi, into the marketplace, the sports arena, the educational institutions, the factory, and there allow God's radiance to shine through us.

In one of his poems Eliot asks: "And should I have the right to smile?" Smile, indeed, we must because the splendor of our God has come into our world.

(Bp. Morneau is the auxiliary bishop of the Green Bay Diocese and pastor of Resurrection Parish in Allouez.)