Christians Celebrate Epiphany
It is Epiphany, the Christian feast day which ends the Christmas season. It is seen in some traditions as the day that commemorates the coming of the Magi indicating the Light of the World being made known to the world beyond the Jewish community. In other traditions this is the day that commemorates John's baptism of Jesus.
The Epiphany is an ancient Christian feast day and is significant in a number of ways. In the East, where it originated, the Epiphany celebrates the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. It also celebrates Jesus' birth.
The Western Church began celebrating the Epiphany in the 4th century where it was, and still is, associated with the visit of the magi (wise men) to the infant Jesus when God revealed himself to the world through the incarnation of Jesus.
For many Protestant church traditions, the season of Epiphany extends from 6 January until Ash Wednesday, which begins the season of Lent leading to Easter.
Other traditions, including the Roman Catholic tradition, observe Epiphany as a single day, with the Sundays following Epiphany counted as Ordinary Time.
The Epiphany is also known as Dia de los Reyes (Three Kings Day).
But this word epiphany is used in so many places. It has been the name of rock bands, albums and songs. It is a name given sometimes to people (not often) and used as titles of articles, books, movies, and works of art.
Epiphany, (let's get out the big book of words shall we?). "Epiphany: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning..." (Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary).
A sudden understanding of the essence or meaning. The light dawns over Marblehead...the light bulb goes on in the mind of the cartoon character....
Where do we need to have some light shed on a matter? Where do we clamor for meaning? Where do we look for answers? As a culture, what is the biggest question, most widely asked, about the meaning of something?
There is something very reassuring about this notion of an epiphany, that one can know an essential meaning. The hope of epiphany warms the heart, encourages one forward. That's a journey worth going on. That's a star worth following.
But an experience of epiphany can also be a very dangerous encounter as well. For some, what one thinks one knows to be true is too often used to identify oneself over and against someone else. Perhaps we need to heed the confession of the Christian writer Paul more often, "I see in a glass darkly...." Or as the 20th century theologian Paul Tillich has taught, we see this kind of deep meaning only fragmentarily. We have an encounter with truth and then any reflection we make upon that encounter fragments it the minute after the moment of insight. The action of reflecting on what we have seen or known, that action itself narrows the truth. Naming the meaning narrows the meaning.
Oh there are times that language is a gateway to epiphany, but a language construct can never fully reflect the fullness of deep spiritual meaning or truth behind the language. So we are always living with one part of ourselves grasping truth, the meaning we have just encountered, and another part of ourselves confessing our inability to see and tell the whole of the thing. It takes courage to live with truth this way. Here's to a year full of the courage to know our limits and still be caught by the epiphanies!
