Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ (January 6)

[Pope Saint Leo the Great]

Rejoice in the Lord, my dearly beloved brethren; again I say, rejoice. For it is but a few days since the solemnity of the Birth of Christ, and the world is already illumined by the Feast of His manifestation. On this Feast Day the world acknowledges Him Who was born of a Virgin on the former Feast. The Word made Flesh so ordained His Manifestation that as a newborn Infant He would be known to believers, but hidden from persecutors. Already on Christmas the heavens were resplendent with the Glory of God, and the sound of His Truth went out to all the earth when an army of Angels appeared to the shepherds as messengers of the newborn Savior, and the guiding star began leading the Magi to adore Him, then it was that the Birth of the true King shone over the world, from the rising of the sun even to its setting. For, through the Magi both the East learned the truth of this great event, and the Roman Empire was not left in ignorance.

Herod, alarmed, sought to crush the life of the Infant King; and, though he was unaware of it himself, his very cruelty was to be an instrument in the service of Divine Providence. Pursuing his evil designs against the Child he knew not, he decreed the indiscriminate slaughter of infants; but his sacrilegious outrage merely served to make known to all the world the heaven-told tidings of the Savior’s Birth. Both by the depravity of this cruel oppressor and by the miraculous celestial light, men were the more impelled and emboldened to speak of what they had seen and heard. Then, moreover, the Savior was borne into Egypt so that by this secret grace those people who were so fastly bound to all manner of error and evil might receive their call to impending salvation. Thus, it happened that, while yet steeped in the error of superstition, the Egyptians were to play host to Him Who is the Truth.

Let us therefore acknowledge, beloved brethren, in the adoration of the Magi the first sign of our calling and of our faith; and let us celebrate with glad hearts the beginnings of our blessed hope. From now on, we are moving into our eternal heritage; henceforth the passages of Scripture which concealed Christ are now open to us; and the truth which the Jews in the blindness of their hearts did not receive, casts its light on all nations. Let us fittingly honor this most sacred day on which the Author of our salvation appeared. He whom the Magi worshipped as an Infant in a crib, we will adore as Omnipotent King of Heaven; and as from their treasury they gave mystical gifts* to the Lord, so let us also from the treasury of our hearts offer gifts that are worthy of God.

[*-Gold shows the King’s power; frankincense makes us think of the great High Priest; myrrh points forward to the Lord’s burial.]