Feast of the Epiphany - Homily 6

Homily 6 - 2021

Today’s story of the visit to Jesus of the “wise men from the east” picked up something of the hopes of Israel — as we heard in today’s First Reading from Isaiah and in the Psalm response: “The nations come to your light” … , “all are assembling and coming towards you” … , “the kings of Sheba and Sea shall bring him gifts”. But notice, at least in these passages, it was all one-way traffic. Matthew concluded his Gospel with Jesus’ directive to his disciples to “go out into the whole world and preach the Good News to every creature”. One-way traffic again, but this time going in the reverse direction, going out to encounter the whole world, bringing not “gold, frankincense and myrrh”, but the “Good News” of Jesus.

To bring the Good News effectively, we need to be saturated with it. As I look at our world today, the world hardly seems interested in what we have. Then, as I look back over my life, I wonder how much I have been saturated with Jesus’ Good News. It is not enough, perhaps not even our job, to tell people how to behave. Our example will also be useless unless it is recognised immediately as Good News. It may not even be noticed as different from anyone else’s lifestyle. It won’t be attractive. In my more depressed moments, I wonder if I have had a clear sense of, and appreciated enough myself, just what was the Good News I was called to live.

How to behave depends on a deeper realisation: why behave. The “Good News” will be the answer to that question. And the answer is always, in some way or other: because every person has a wonderful dignity springing simply from our humanity, because we are created and loved by God. That is what I need to realise, firstly in regard to myself. That is what I need to appreciate, to be obviously saturated with.

How to become saturated? Mary, we are told, “treasured” her experience and “pondered it”. Her experience at times was bewildering, perplexing — to say the least. I imagine that she became better at it as she practised it. She came to recognise the presence and action, there in her life, of the God who respected her, who respected her freedom, who respected her choices, who took her seriously, who, simply, loved her. That is why she “treasured” her experience. That is how she learnt to say “yes” to the difficult choices of life. And Joseph, too, was able to say “yes” to the disconcerting, life-changing, decisions indicated to him in his dreams because he had already learnt through experience to recognise the hand of God, to know that God loved him, and so to be sure that God could be trusted.

Until we have “treasured” the same discovery as Mary and Joseph, we shall have little Good News to bring to our struggling, seeking, needy world.