The Feast of the Epiphany

Life, my sisters and brothers, is full of surprises. Sometimes we get surprised. We can be surprised by sorrow, of course; surprised by a betrayal, an illness, an unexpected death.  Yet many, even most of the surprises we hold onto and treasure, are pleasant ones:  when we are surprised by an unexpected call or visit from an old friend, by a poignant memory that rises silently out of our consciousness, by an unexpected kindness done for us, by an insight that we speak with our mouths before we fully understand it with our minds and hearts.

And sometimes, once in a while, we are surprised by God’s grace working in our lives, by those rare moments when it all makes sense, when we know with our hearts that what we believe with our minds is true. We call those divine moments “epiphanies,” “shining forths”; that’s what we celebrate today.  How surprised the Magi were, when they saw a new and radiant star! How surprised they were when they found the infant king in a stable, sitting on his mother’s lap! How surprised were Mary and Joseph, when their infant child born in poverty received the homage of shepherds and kings.

Through a series of events to surprising and complicated—I might even say “too miraculous”—to recount in a short time, on November 3, I found myself with a family of friends and benefactors of Seattle University and of our Archdiocese, sitting in Pope Francis’ library at the Vatican. That was a big surprise.

Our Holy Father Francis is in fact everything you have seen and heard about him:  warmly engaging, humble, delightfully good-humored, radiant in his faith and hope. It was like sitting with a sweet and loving old Italian pastor (Don’t get any ideas, Fr. Magnano…). He wanted to know about us, and about our world here in the Northwest. He had on worn black shoes, the simple silver cross he had worn in Buenos Aires around his neck, and had a frayed button on his white cassock.  He must drive his staff crazy.

At the end of what was supposed to be a 15-minute meet-and-greet audience that he himself extended to 45 minutes of vivid conversation, one of our group asked him what message he wanted us to bring home with us.  Counting on his fingers, he gave us five reminders to hold onto, five surprising descriptors of what it means to be Church in this moment of history.  I want to share them with you today. I need to hear them again myself, to be consoled and challenged and surprised by them again.

Testimonianza:  Witness

Vicinanza: Nearness to those in need, to the poor

Incarzione: Incarnation

Ospedale di Campo:  The Church as Field Hospital

Misericordia: Mercy

The first word was “testimonanza”, witness.  Words are fine, he said, but active witness is what matters: witness through our lived and living actions to the saving power of Christ in this broken world. 

Our witness is lived out in his second word “vicinanza,” nearness, closeness. We cannot give witness to Christ in abstraction, but only in our direct and loving contact with others, and especially in our care for the poor and our nearness to the afflicted. 

He reminded us that this is how the incarnation, “incarnazione,” continues in this world: Christ is incarnate again and always in us, made flesh in deeds more than in words. Christ’s life and reality are transmitted in us and through us, made flesh again here at this altar, truly, but also and equally in our witness and in our loving respect and embrace of all God’s children. 

The Church, he reminded us, is not a spa to which we retreat for comfort, but is a “field hospital,” a place of healing for those most hurting, most excluded, most in need. The Good Samaritan, he reminded us, didn’t ask the man in the ditch to see his identity card. He climbed into the ditch and pulled the suffering man out, and cared for him. 

Why?  Because the Good Samaritan knew the grace and power of “misericordia”, of mercy. God’s surprising, infinite compassion for us, poor banished children of Eve, is the key to everything. God’s mercy is the hope that gives meaning to our lives, and makes it possible for us do what is impossible: to continue the work of the incarnation, to be close to those who are in need, to give witness. The Holy Father calls this moment in the history of the Church “The Era of Mercy,” and invited us to be its heralds. 

That moment for us was an epiphany, a surprising breakthrough of the glory of God into our lives. Pope Francis’ gentle and insistent witness to grace and mercy became an invitation for us to witness to grace and mercy and become their heralds. He continually baffles his staff and the world by insisting that radiant love and service are more important than the letter of the law. He reminds us that God is really with us in our joys and sorrows, in our own need and in the neediest in our world. The Light of Mercy shines on us as starlight shone upon the Virgin and her Child, guiding us as it guided the Magi to lay our gifts at his feet.

Life is full of surprises, my brothers and sisters. Life is full of surprises. 

Thomas M. Lucas S.J.