Feast of the Epiphany
January 6, 2018
Today’s solemnity, the Epiphany, tells us about an elementary truth. It recounts the manner by which God, entering history, finds the way to enter into a relationship with humanity. His way of meeting us is not by imposing Himself, by compelling us, by obliging us to deal with Him. In meeting us, God attracts us.
Attraction is a power that does not come from outside, but from within, which one finds within.
It is what happens to the Magi, to those mysterious personalities from the East who set off on the way to see a Child who is a King. They come from afar, because attraction is so strong that it reaches everyone, everywhere. It does not exclude anyone. It is not limited to attracting a particular kind of person rather than another: it attracts everyone. Its range is so vast as not to miss anyone. It draws everyone because each one has, in the heart, a nostalgia which attraction awakens within, like an old and deep memory.
It draws each person differently, depending on how each one sees and hears. We could say that for each individual there is the mystery of a star that shines, that lights up not so much in the sky, as in the heart.
God attracts us with a light different from any other light. It is a light that illuminates even those areas of life that would otherwise remain in darkness: pain, death, and those Easter passages that everyone goes through, sooner or later. It is a light that does not explain everything, but one that helps us to go on and points out the next step. When this star lights up, one cannot be set off, and nothing will ever be the same.
The way is never easy, and the temptation to turn back can begin to creep in. Sometimes the light disappears, and the doubt of being wrong enters, the doubt of having lost the way. It is the time of trial, of faith. It’s then that we discover that there are other people on the same road, equally attracted by a light, who are asking where the One who was born is? The answer we find together, and we get right back in there on our way, and the star reappears, for the joy of those who have not stopped walking, searching, and believing.
Where does the star lead? It leads to an act of adoration, a humble bowing down before the Mystery that has drawn near. It leads to an act where we offer gifts, those gifts that have traveled with us and that say something about our lives. We set off on the way to able to offer them.
It is an act, and it is a style of life. God attracts, but not everyone allows themselves to be attracted. Matthew tells us that just the closest, the privileged, those for whom the journey would be more comfortable and easy, don’t allow themselves to be drawn, they do not set off. The leaders, the scribes all know about the light, but they do not desire it, they are not moved. Herod fears it, and neither is he moved.
To let ourselves be attracted we must know how to abandon something. We must know how to give up the comfort and security of our privileges and certainties, to allow ourselves change our life deeply. It is a way that lasts an entire life, that begins again and again, and which frankly we cannot but make for we are attracted by the One who first set off towards us, and who first desires to meet us.
What, then, does someone find who goes through this journey until the end? He or she encounters the paradox of a God Who bows down and strips Himself before man, Who washes his feet, Who gives Himself to him, entirely, right to the end. For this reason, it is indeed worth the effort to follow the light that attracts and sets off on the way.
+Pierbattista
