Posted on January 5, 2020 View all news
Laudetur Jesus Christus! Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!
Sia lodato Gesù Cristo! Praised be Jesus Christ!
Tomorrow, and also here in the United States today, we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany. This is the day in which Christ was revealed to the Gentiles when the Magi from the East brought Him gifts worthy of a king. It pleased God that poor shepherds should first adore His Son, and then by the Magi from the East.
This is a reminder to us that God’s ways are not our ways. He was born in a manger and recognized by those we would assume wouldn’t know Him. We must always remember that when everything seems to be going wrong, whether it is in our personal lives, in society, in the Church, that God’s ways are not our ways. God will use everything ultimately for His glory, and we must be patient with His humility and His genius. May we seek to conform ourselves more to how God operates, rather than always giving in to our impulses like St. Peter, who was often rebuked by Our Lord in the Gospel for thinking as men do and not as God does. It is only when we begin to conform our wills to God’s that will begin to think as He does.
Please find this Epiphany sermon from St. Gregory the Great. Have a blessed Epiphany and a good week ahead!
“Dearly beloved brethren, hear ye from the Gospel lesson how, when the King of heaven was born, the king of earth was troubled? The heights of heaven are opened and the depths of earth are stirred. Let us now consider the question, why, when the Redeemer was born, an angel brought the news to the shepherds of Judea, but a star led the wise men of the East to worship Him. It seemeth as if the Jews as reasonable creatures received a revelation from a reasonable being, that is, an angel, but the Gentiles without, being as brutes, are roused not by a voice, but by a sign, that is, a star. Hence Paul hath it: a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not but prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe. So the prophesying, that is, of the angel was given to them that believed, and the sign to them that believed not.
Thus also we remark that afterwards the Redeemer was preached among the Gentiles not by Himself, but by His Apostles, even as, when a little Child, He is shown to them, not by the voice of angels, but merely by the vision of a star. When He Himself had begun to speak He was made known to us by speakers, but when He lay silent in the manger, by that silent testimony in heaven…
All things which He had made, bore witness that their Maker was come. Let me reckon them after the manner of men. The heavens knew that He was God, and sent a star to shine over where He lay. The sea knew it, and bore Him up when He walked upon it. The earth knew it, and quaked when He died. The sun knew it, and was darkened. The rocks and walls knew it, and rent at the hour of His death. Hell knew it, and gave up the dead that were in it…” – St. Gregory the Great