Epiphany 2025: are we attentive to the little daily epiphanies?

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

This past Wednesday night, I was looking for a video to describe the history of Medjugorje. In case you don’t know, it’s the sight of an alleged ongoing appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary since 1981. There’s some controversy surrounding the truth of the appearances, though. In general, the Vatican says that it is a good place for pilgrimage but it takes no official opinion on the truth or falsity of the visions. It cannot deny that there appear to have been miraculous healings for visitors going to the shrine but it is more cautious of the visions from the people who started having visions when they were children but who are now in their fifties. 

I would guess most of the people going there, including a local group who recently went, have no interest in entering into the controversy surrounding the visions. In that way, they are like the Magi from today’s Gospel. These astrologers, probably from modern day Iraq, could have had no idea that they were fulfilling Old Testament prophecy when they walked into Jerusalem in search of the newborn King of the Jews. They were just interpreting the movements of a star and it led them there. They couldn’t have known that the star was simply light being drawn to the child who would one day identify himself as the light of the world. They didn’t have the Old Testament, after all, so they couldn’t include it among what they considered their holy writings. Instead, they had to rely completely on the instinct built into human beings to search for things larger than themselves and the Holy Spirit guiding and directing them along the way. Thankfully, their instincts told them something wasn’t right with Herod, though, and they trusted the Holy Spirit when he told them not to go back and tell the false king where the true king had been born. They went home, like the shepherds on the day of Jesus’ birth, a little wiser and a little more faithful. 

I want to admit something that I’m not proud of at this point. It’s only been recently that I’ve prioritized spending a Holy Hour each day. You’d think, as a priest, I would have done it every day from the time of my ordination. Unfortunately, when I was ordained, it wasn’t stressed how important that was. I did spend time in prayer each day reading and reflecting on what’s called the Liturgy of the Hours. But, spending time reading Sacred Scripture and then being quiet and listening is really something I’ve only been doing since last June, when I decided to start classes to officially be a spiritual director. I struggled for a good six months not to fill the time reading something or looking up prayers on my phone. In fact, I’ve only recently got to a point where I put a moratorium on my phone in the chapel because it is only a distraction for me. That hour is singularly my time with my friend, just being with Jesus and expecting nothing. One question that I keep bringing to Jesus is what He wants from St. Patrick’s. As I shared in this week’s bulletin, Jesus shares with me that something great is going to happen here. However, when I ask for greater clarity what that means, I hear “wait and see”. I ask if it will be a celebration or an opportunity for growth and he tells me that I should wait and see. Now, I’ll admit, I’m not claiming to be the recipient of special revelations, anything more than what anyone else would hear. And, even though I use the example of the flood in the gospel, I’m not saying that it’s going to have the same emotional impact that the flood did. I’m just saying that, regardless of what happens, some will think it is a positive and some will think it’s a negative. God could make us the premiere ice cream dealer in the world and some would think that’s great while others would be depressed because they’re lactose intolerant or because the ice cream is just too cold. 

In the meantime, I’ve appreciated waiting and seeing because it has opened my eyes to all the small revelations Jesus puts into my daily life. I noticed the white purity of the snow on Thursday. I gave thanks for the questions of a person struggling with their faith. God’s making epiphanies dailys in our lives. Do we notice them?

Mary, Mother of God: Making sure we ponder the authentic words Mary pondered.

Friends

Peace be with you.

I hate the phrase toxic masculinity. It’s become very popular among academics to demonize anything that’s stereotypically masculine. However, having said that, I was listening to a podcast yesterday morning called The Counsel of Trent by a Catholic Answers presenter named Trent Horn. He was talking about how there is this toxic group of apologists who are male and claim they can be crass or crude. They even claim a permission in scripture to be able to do this. They’ll take a passage from St. Paul where harsh words seem to be said to justify this, even though Trent Horn was quick to point out that what they’re interpreting as a harsh word is better translated as refuse or manure or fertilizer rather than a harsher equivalent, if you catch my drift. He says these men will say that this passage gives them the right to speak bluntly as men ought to do. For instance, when talking to a former “adult” movie star who has reformed her life and is trying to work within that community to get others out of the slavery they’re stuck in, one of these men, in a debate, referred to her using a toxic word to describe her current, post confession, post conversion life as though it were stuck in her past life. Trent took exception to these men asking, saying that they’ve doubled the scandal they caused by not only refusing to accept the veracity of her repentance but by using harshly offensive language in doing so.

That type of toxic masculinity is rooted in an inability to fully grasp the Gospel. I set that in stark contrast to what happened in the Gospel today. If you haven’t heard the full explanation of the Birth of the Lord from the Gospel of Luke this year, I’d suggest watching A Charlie Brown Christmas in which the character Linus finally drops his blanket to relate the story of how the shepherds have this tremendous encounter with angelic forces in a field. Contrary to some depictions you may get from some Christian art, shepherds are not a group of philosophical guys sitting around a field hoping angels would come to enlighten them about the workings of the world. They were the toughest, dirtiest, most hardscrabble guys alive at the time. They had to defend their sheep from wolves and thieves. They had to know where the best fields were to get their sheep food and water and how to deal with other shepherds who knew where those fields were to get there ahead of them. The last thing they were going to do was take a break to go see someone else’s baby. These guys aren’t like me. When I see a baby coming into church, I say “Oh a baby, I want to hold her”. These guys see sheep born all the time, what do they care about a baby? The fact that these guys go running to Bethlehem goes to show how untoxic their masculinity is. They have had an encounter that just has to be explored. This fact alone should tell those who believe Jesus was just a great man and not fully God and fully human that they got it wrong. The fact that shepherds were the ones who ran off to see this baby points to the fact that something special has happened here and that’s the fact that God himself has come among us as a baby. As they arrive in Bethlehem to where the Holy Family is staying, they tell the story of what happened in the field and, as they go back to their flocks, the Bible says that these hardscrabble guys continue glorifying and praising God. It goes to show the quality of the encounter these men had. They had to have an encounter with the one true God. 

       There’s a movie out there, which I’m not going to say where you can find it because I don’t want to give it any undue publicity, but it purports to be about the life of Mary. I think that, because of the success of a series like The Chosen, mainstream Hollywood thought there may be money in trying to get into telling the story of Mary. However, as they tend to do, this movie really misses the mark. One of the most glaring examples happens when Mary is asked by the Angel Gabriel to be the mother of God and her response is “Let it be me”. NO! Mary’s response was “May it be done to me according to your word” It’s the difference between someone saying “I trust you God so I will do it the way your way” versus “I’ll do it my way”. Over and over again in this movie, they get Mary wrong because it is not rooted in Sacred Scripture interpreted through the lens of Sacred Tradition but rooted in false notions of ecumenism and female empowerment. 

We are called to be like Mary, meditating in our hearts on the experiences she had with Jesus and having the joy of the shepherds, praising and glorifying God. One of our challenges is to make sure we are following the right message when we do so. We have to make sure we are, like Mary, meditating on what the Bible actually says and what our faith professes and not simply what someone with a toxic agenda wants us to believe. If, in the end, in our prayer we must echo Mary’s fiat, “May it be done to be according to your word.”