This third week of our Christmas celebration we find our selves united with those who seek light in the midst of Darkness.    It is at the very heart of the human person to seek and desire that which is greater than us.  For thousands of years women and men have sought some spiritual insight, enrichment or experience.   In seeking something greater than them it stretches us beyond our humanity and thrusts into a spiritual level where one can encounter the divine.   This week in celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany, we celebrate God’s manifestation to all the world.   All human kind can find and enter into the fulfillment of their deepest longing.

There are many religious  traditions where people have been seeking to encounter the Divine.  From great religious traditions of the East, to primary faith traditions of today.  Many offering great and beautiful expressions of the spiritual life.  Today so many have turned from religion to seeing themselves as spiritual  This desire to tap into the spiritual life is good and often is enrichening peoples lives.

As we celebrate Epiphany it is here that the search for the spiritual life finds its culmination in the poverty of the Manger.  For as one searches for God, and the Divine Presence, it is ultimately found in the love shown through God’s people of Israel.  For it is from this special people that called His own and entered into a special relationship that we have brought forth for us the one who is the direction that so many seek.

The Wise men we see today like so many others sought to encounter the divine.  Not knowing where the light of their journey would lead them through the darkness, found themselves before the simplicity of the manger.   Their search lead them out of darkness into the true and awesome light of God found in His only Son, born in the poverty of the manger.

Today we as a world, a nation a society and church are seeking.  We seek meaning, understanding and belonging.  We seek to know and experience love beyond all telling.  In this celebration our hopes and dreams are complete if we allow the Light of Christ to shine through our own darkness to enable us to become Light and Hope for others to see.  God’s love is for the whole world, no borders, no frontiers nor walls shut us out of God’s love.  All that truly seek Him, find Him.  All that seek to know Him, encounter Him, and through the darkness are brought out into the Light of the New Star, Jesus the morning star that never fades.

Blessed Epiphany

Fr. Stephan