Welcome back, and Happy New Year!
As we enter a new calendar year, we also CONTINUE to celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus the Christ! As a point of information, in the official Catholic calendar, the Christmas SEASON begins with the celebration of the birth of Jesus and lasts until the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord. The FEAST of Christmas lasts 12 days – from Christmas day itself until the Feast of the Epiphany. Traditionally, the Epiphany had been fixed to January 6, and the Baptism of the Lord is celebrated on the octave (eighth day) of the Epiphany.
If you visit the Shrine, we, true to the liturgical season of Christmas, still have our Christmas decorations up and still have our Nativity scene displayed as we continue to celebrate the JOY of the Incarnation AND as we (this week especially) celebrate the AWAKENING of the Epiphany!
How does one understand the Epiphany? As with every one of our beautiful feasts, there are layers upon layers of understandings. Among them, the one I offer for reflection is the Epiphany as celebration of the manifestation of Christ. Another way of putting this is to say that it is a celebration of the discovery/awakening of the fact that this baby is a manifestation of God.
That this human child is REVELATORY of the Creator of the universe,
that this little baby is a manifestation of the one we call God,
is a powerful statement!
I love the phraseology here because the mission of any Religious of the Sacred Heart is to:
Discover and Reveal the Love of the Heart of Christ.
So my task is the task of the Magi: To humbly come before the Christ child and to humbly be open enough to lay down my gifts at the service of the Christ child and to humbly discover my God through and in that Christ child is the first half of what I commit myself to do in life.
The other half is to try to, through my own life and loves and actions, reveal the Heart of Christ to others!
This is also the task of any and every educator of the Sacred Heart. It is also meant to be the life goal of any and every child of the Sacred Heart.
During this week of the Feast of the Epiphany, I pray for each of us, that we:
- continue to grow in our ability to do the necessary work to seek/discover the Christ Child (as did the Magi), and
- allow ourselves to be humble enough to worship/be open to the Christ Child before us (as were the Magi).
If we do these things, the second half of the formula flows naturally and we WILL reveal the Heart of Christ to those around us.
May it be so!
Maureen Glavin, rscj
