From the Pastoral Team

From Our Pastor

(En Español)

It feels that we just celebrated Christmas, and now we are celebrating the Epiphany. Some people have told me that when you feel that time flies, it is a sign that we are getting old. Christmas offers us two of the finest readings, probably in all of the New Testament. The first one is the story of St. Luke of the birth of the Messiah, and we all know it because we all come and surround the crib each year and we see what a wonderful scene it is. The second Gospel is the one that we hear this weekend. It’s the Gospel for the Epiphany. The three wise men came to Bethlehem and brought with them their gifts to pay homage to the Christ child. With this celebration, we understand that today, all the gentiles of the world understand that Jesus came, not just for the people of Israel, but for all people everywhere. He was to be the Messiah not only for a small group of people who held on to the hope of the Messiah for centuries and centuries, but he had come for us all.

Epiphany is, rightly to us who are gentiles, perhaps the happiest of days, because we have an opportunity to rejoice in the fact that, not only is the Savior, the child, born, but most especially that he is truly born to us. Epiphany means manifestation. It’s a Greek word and it literally means to draw back the veil. And whenever you hear of epiphanies in the Gospel, it means that God is drawing back the veil that covers a great mystery and all of us peer into this mystery, able to understand much more about who God is and who we are.

And what did they see, these three kings or these three magi? What they saw was, as Matthew says, the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell on their knees and they worshiped him. Then from their treasures, they offered him gold, a sign and symbol of kingship; and frankincense, the sign and symbol of the presence of God Himself, seen in the perfumed smoke of prayer rising up to heaven; and the final gift was the perfumed oil, which was to be used for his burial, and this, of course, was the sign of his sacrifice, that he would offer up his life in suffering and great pain but for the redemption of the whole world.

The main thing to remember today is that, for Christians, it’s very easy for us to understand when the veil was lifted and what the Magi saw and what happened to them, for we too are on a long journey and we take it for granted that the sign and symbol of our relationship with Jesus and our relationship with God, the sign and symbol is that we are on a journey together. We are a pilgrim church. We’re going after, we have been called to follow a star, and our star is the faith that we have been given in baptism. We also come to adore him, Christ, our Lord, and we fall on our knees.

We must remember the coming of Jesus is not a one-time-only thing in history. He comes each morning to call us to continue our journey with him, following where he, our star, leads us, by his faith and our faith, going to where he takes us, in and out of the byways of our lives, but ultimately leading us safely home.

Peace and all good  — Fr. Oscar Mendez, OFM

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