Homily for Thursday after Epiphany

Homily for the
Thursday after Epiphany

January 10, 2019

Collect
Nativity, Washington, D.C.

“O God, … grant that your people …, bathed ever more in [their Redeemer’s] radiance, may reach everlasting glory” (Collect).

from http://kpshaw.blogspot.com/2013/03/184.html 

In these days after the feast of the Epiphany, the liturgy continues the themes of light, glory, and splendor, of Christ our Redeemer revealed to the world.

Today we prayed in the Collect that we, the people of God, might “acknowledge the full splendor of [our] Redeemer” and be “bathed ever more in his radiance,” and that thru this splendor, this radiance of Christ, we might “reach everlasting glory.”

How is this to happen?  No angels appear to us announcing, “Glory to God in the highest,” and sending us to find a child in a manger.  No fabulous star leads us to his home.  How does Christ’s splendor bathe us?

We have heard the Good News announced to us, the same “glad tidings” of healing and liberation that Jesus announced in the synagog at Nazareth (Luke 4:14-22).  We encounter this Christ personally in the sacred mysteries of his Church:  in Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing, Matrimony, and Orders.  When we celebrate these with faith, we are bathed in the splendor of Christ’s glory and we anticipate a fuller glory when he brings us to everlasting life.  Christ himself is the fabulous star, the rising sun, who guides us to his home and will make it also our home.  The sacraments, wherein his radiance touches us, are our portals to the eternal glory of our Redeemer.

In the meantime, we acknowledge the splendor of our Redeemer by bathing others, our sisters and brothers, in his radiance; by loving them, as St. John says, loving all God’s children with the love that he has bestowed upon us (1 John 4:19).  The radiance within us, if it’s truly within, must burst out and shine upon the world.  Our faith in the glory of the risen Christ, lived out in daily, practical love, conquers the evil of the world (1 John 5:4).

The evil of the world isn’t something lurking at the southern border.  Yes, there are evils in the outside world:  drugs, human trafficking, nuclear weapons, people in power using that power to oppress others, abortion, religious persecution, sexual harassment, racism, and all the other stuff constantly in the news.  More immediately, we ought to be concerned about the evils of our internal world:  our own unfair or unkind judgments, spitefulness, gossip, laziness, lack of due attention to others, petty deceptions – well, you know the entire litany, don’t you?  This is the evil which needs the bathing radiance of Christ our Redeemer, so that we might “reach everlasting glory.”