JANUARY 6, 2010 –
1 JOHN 5:5-13; MARK 1:7-11
Today, January 6, the twelfth day
after Christmas, is the date proper to the Epiphany. Indeed, Shakespeare
witnesses to the fact that this eve of this feast was in times past called “The
Twelfth Night”. Since it closed the Christmas festivities it was a day of
celebration, so he used this name as the title of one of his comedies. The readings we have just heard reflect the
mystery of the Epiphany, which means “Appearance”, or “Revelation”, even
though, for practical reasons, the liturgy now commemorated this event this
past Sunday. The Epiphany that Matthew records in the early pages of his Gospel
concerns the revelation of the heavenly sent infant to the nations of the
world, represented by the Magi. Mark also describes an epiphany but one that is
made early in the public ministry of our Lord, omitting any reference to the
human origins of the Savior. JESUS SAW THE SKY RENT IN TWO AND THE SPIRIT DESCENDING ON
HIM LIKE A DOVE. THEN A VOICE CAME FROM THE HEAVENS: “YOU ARE MY BELOVED SON.” The experience of our Lord recorded with these
words is recounted in the opening chapter of Mark’s Gospel with the effect of
introducing as a background to the whole of his active life a transcendent
horizon. In the person of Jesus we are introduced to the existence of an
invisible God who is so intimately present in him as to claim to be his Father.
God himself is active in this man baptized by John and commissioned to speak
and teach in his Father’s name. This hidden God manifests himself, Mark assures
us, by means of voice that discloses the true identity of the man who name,
Jesus, had already designated him as the Savior. If Mark presents this epiphany
at the beginning of the public life of Jesus, his purpose is to place the whole
of our Lord’s teaching and activities as well as in his periods of solitary
prayer and retirement within God’s plan of reconciliation. This revelation is
made on the occasion when our Lord submits to a baptism of repentance, as a
sign that he takes on himself the sins of the human race so as to bring about
our reconciliation with the God who reveals with these words the mission that
now begins. In this man Jesus, God himself is directly present and acting to
restore and heal the creature made in his image and likeness.
There is an invisible world that
communicates with the world of our daily life in various ways. This
transcendent world, however, reveals itself with a unique accessibility through
the presence of this person Jesus. All his doings, all his speech, his very
person have a hidden energy that derives from God himself. In the opening event
of his public life already there is revealed the mysterious fact that the one
God exists as three persons and actively engages himself in our human history in
the person of the man Jesus. His appearance is the inception of a new creation
that functions in time according to its own distinctive laws that are gradually
disclosed in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of the Son of Mary.
The only way to grasp the full meaning of the Gospel of Mark is to approach it
with the understanding provided by this initial perspective that in Jesus, his
beloved Son, God the Father also is present and acts through his Spirit.
Faith in this revelation comes
directly from heaven itself, as an invitation to enter that world where God is
all in all. There is no other access to the ultimate reality that sustains all
the cosmos than the decision we make to believe the witness of the man Jesus as
recorded by his evangelist, Mark. Faith in the mystery of the Incarnation is a
gift of grace that is much more than appears at first. As we grow in knowledge of the God who
becomes man in the infant Jesus we gradually realize why
Ben Sirach possessed a deep insight into a feature of
this created world that he enunciated in a lapidary phrase: “All things are
twofold, one as counterpart to the other.” (42.25) God’s Epiphany in the person
of his beloved Son has as its counterpart his reception by those whom he
addresses. This response takes the form of a welcoming belief in his Son whose
true identity is revealed by the heavenly voice at his baptism. The response of
our faith is more than an assent of the mind to the truth of this revelation;
it is a commitment of our whole life, our very self, to the person of the
Savior and to the message he brings us by his words and example. The new life
that the birth of Jesus brings to this visible creation is of such a personal
nature as to become fully realized only through the most intimate of human
acts, that is to say, by loving trust in his person. We can come to know the
Lord only by giving our very self to him, from the heart. Gregory the Great
understood this fundamental feature of our faith and passé it on to William of
Saint Thierry who expressed it with lapidary brevity: “Love itself is
knowledge.”
Go to index
page