Feast of the Epiphany

Mass at Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, also known as Little Christmas.
In Matthew’s Gospel we read of how the Magi from the East followed the dazzling star
which came to rest over Bethlehem, David’s city, where they greeted the newborn King
and offered their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

This arrival and tribute of the Magi symbolize the fact that Jesus is the long
awaited Messiah, not only for the people of Israel but for all the nations. Jesus brings
hope, healing and salvation to all people. Further, we, like the Magi, have the
responsibility to hear and proclaim the Good News of Christ’s coming among us to the
whole of creation.

We call this sacred responsibility of sharing the message of Jesus with others
evangelization. That is why during the next three years in our diocese we will be
engaged in a program of faith sharing entitled Our Amazing God. It will be an
opportunity both for internal renewal and external proclamation to the many within
our society who are unchurched and to our fellow Catholics who have fallen away from
the practice of their faith.

The first year will be focused on God’s love, the second on the person of Christ
and the third on the movement of the Spirit within us. I hope that all the members of

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our diocese will participate in this initiative through our prayers, the revitalization of
our own journey of Christian discipleship and the sharing of our faith with others.

However, as Pope Benedict XVI pointed out in his recent encyclical Caritas in
Veritate, the concept of evangelization is not limited to addressing people’s spiritual
needs, but also seeks to address the needs of the whole person: social, political and
economic. Hence, working on behalf of social justice and promoting the common good
within society is not separate from the mission of evangelization – it is part and parcel
of it.

Today, then, we are pleased to recognize in our midst, our newly elected
Governor Andrew Cuomo and his Lieutenant Governor Robert Duffy. We assure them
of our prayers and best wishes as they undertake their challenging responsibilities on
behalf of the people of our Empire State and seek to fulfill the social and human
development dimension of evangelization.

I would suggest that addressing both the spiritual and social dimensions of
evangelization to which today’s Feast of the Epiphany calls us requires six very
important qualities. I hope all of us who seek to be about the transformation of our
contemporary church and society will seek to develop and integrate these qualities into
our lives.

First, it is important that we be people of vision, people who are open to the

renovating and creative power of God’s Holy Spirit, who constantly challenges us to

risk the unpredictable, to believe the heretofore unseen and then to have the courage to

make such a reality. To be a person of vision, in other words, means to be liberated

from calculated programs, plans and patterns which promise us security and pat

solutions to life’s problems so that we might allow the Holy Spirit to lead us where the

Spirit wills, that Holy Spirit who ever leads us into the uncharted courses of our

unpredictable God, who is predictable only in the call to lead us from where we may

have comfortably settled.

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 I mention this because I observe so many people today who never assume a

challenge, who never try anything new because they are afraid of making

mistakes, of being wrong or of looking bad in the eyes of others. Well, making

mistakes, and being wrong is all part of being human. If, therefore, we are to

fulfill our unique potential and make the distinctive contribution God has in

mind for us to make we must accept ourselves as failure-prone. We must

recognize that we mess up, and goof up but also that we can rise up, measure

up and grow from our mistakes and that progress is truly possible for us. For

this is the glory of the human person which God has revealed and that history

has vindicated repeatedly.

Yes, so often, we present to a world starved for hope not so much, as St

Paul proclaims, the image of a people sure of who we are and what we stand

for, but rather the image of a people who are more cowed by fear than borne

up by hope. That is why I hope that we will strive to be people of vision,

willing to take risks and to explore new frontiers. Otherwise, we leave the

leadership in our Church and society to others or, unfortunately, as is more

likely to be the case, our Church and society will become leaderless.

Second, we must have a deep and abiding trust in God’s Providence, in a God

who never promised us instant success and who frequently writes our history with

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crooked lines. There’s no question about the fact that we’ve been experiencing a period

of turmoil and upheaval in our church and society. In the face of such, there may well

arise the temptation to become discouraged, disillusioned or impatient - to lose sight of

the fact that the renewal of our Church or that the renewal of our society is not a romp

or a few years of intensive work but a long, hard, arduous process that, undoubtedly,

will extend beyond the lifetime of any one of us here present.

That is why we need patient endurance to carry us through the many winters

that it takes to change attitudes and structures. That is why we must avoid the pitfall of

what I would call "instant antiquity," the pitfall of thinking of the problems, challenges

and crises with which we are confronted today are the most serious of all time. This is

simply because we have never experienced the pain of other crises, of other challenges,

of other periods in history.

If, therefore, we are going to avoid discouragement and disillusionment in our

life and service, then, we need a vision of life that is rooted in trust in God’s Providence

and in the cleansing discipline of historical perspective; a vision of life that recognizes

that we live in a Church and society where few areas are all black or all white but

where various shades of grey predominate. If we are committed to serving in such a

Church and society, then, we must be prepared to accept the confusion, the agitation

and the turmoil that abound therein and to tolerate imperfection while seeking to

change it. This is not to lose one's values or to compromise one’s ideals, but rather it is

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to live like a human being in a world where the full force of Christ’s Resurrection and

the work of the Holy Spirit as yet have not been felt. Yes, we constantly live in that

balance between the cross and the resurrection. On the one hand, weeping over the

plight of Jerusalem, and on the other, joyful because of Easter victory that assures us of

the possibilities of tomorrow and that challenges us to celebrate a future which shapes

our present moment in human history.

Third, as people committed to the transformation of our church and society we

must be flexible and open to change. Ministry in our Church and society of today is not

all that different than it was in apostolic times, namely proclaiming the Good News,

building up authentic Christian community, and serving humankind. However, how

this is done, where the stress falls, where the emphasis is placed changes. It can never

remain the same. It can never become frozen because our mission is not to some

abstract humanity, but to the concrete world: to these pulsing people with changing

needs and changing life situations, with different colors and smells, with different

problems and pressures, with different hopes, expectations and frustrations than those

experienced by previous generations. Given this reality, then, we must have the ability

to learn, to grow, and to adapt. The capacity to turn a corner, to change an attitude and

to move on.

In celebrating the sacrament of Confirmation, I am frequently struck by the

words of the prayer recited over the candidates. “Give them the spirit of wisdom and

understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage the spirit of knowledge and

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reverence and fill them with the spirit of wonder and awe in your presence.“ What we

need in our world today, I believe, are more people who are filled with wonder and awe

because people who have this sense of wonder and awe cannot limit themselves to

maintenance or to the status quo because the challenges we encounter are so vast and

unlimited. There is always the opportunity to develop new insights and fresh

perspectives. There are always new colors and shades to be added to the landscape.

Fourth, we must have about us a sense of humor. I mention this because

sometimes we can look upon humor as being frivolous, undignified or unbecoming in

the grand scheme of the divine we are privileged to represent. Or so often we may be

dealing with people who are experiencing difficulty and suffering, and, thus, we can

become by dint of personality overly dour or serious.

That is why it is so important that we be able to step back and gain the balance,

the proportion and the sense of perspective needed to cope with the incongruities of life

and to realize that these incongruities need not defeat us. Rather, as the Resurrection

of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ which we celebrate in this Eucharist proclaims,

ultimate victory over forces, which seem to be insurmountable, is truly possible. And a

sense of humor enables us to gain this perspective.

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 Note well that the humor of which I speak has nothing to do with laughing and

telling jokes because our world is filled with people who laugh and tell jokes but who

have no sense of humor. Neither does the humor about which I speak have anything to

do with poking fun at another's foibles or ridiculing another's stupidity. Rather

genuine humor, like a true sense of humility, involves a ruthless honesty concerning

oneself without any pretense or show. It deals with those surprises that upset the way

we think things ought to be and it lightens the heaviness associated with hurting.

Humor doesn’t deny hurt, but it becomes the vehicle through which anger, defiance and

pain can be handled constructively.

I hope, then, that we will seek to cultivate and maintain a sense of humor, which

enables us to laugh at ourselves and with others, so that we can avoid that anxiety

which can impede our effectiveness and which makes it much more difficult for others

to recognize God’s presence in our life and service.

Fifth, we must bring to our life that spiritual dimension which Archbishop John

Quinn, the retired Archbishop of San Francisco, calls evangelical daring. Paul wrote in

his letter to Timothy: "The spirit God has given us is not a cowardly spirit." Indeed, it

is not. Evangelical daring, therefore, is not defiance but it is the prudence of the Holy

Spirit. Evangelical daring is not mere calculation; it is simplicity of heart and reliance

upon the wisdom and providence of God. Evangelical daring is not a clenched fist, it is

open arms. Evangelical daring is not power, it is vulnerability.

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 Evangelical daring is what President Abraham Lincoln showed when he

reluctantly led our nation into civil war to preserve the Union. Evangelical daring is

what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt demonstrated when he became known as a

“traitor to his class” by pioneering social security, implement insurance and the Works

Project Administration. Evangelical daring is what Dwight Eisenhower reflected in the

famous presidential farewell address when he warned our nation against the danger “of

the military industrial complex.” Evangelical daring is what Dr. Martin Luther King

Jr. espoused when he sought to achieve civil rights through the path of non-violence.

Evangelical daring is what Archbishop Oscar Romero showed when he

tenaciously proclaimed the Good News without rancor or bitterness in the face of

deadly hostility. Evangelical daring is what Mother Theresa showed when she left the

security of her religious order to found the Missionaries of Charity, to care for the

unwanted paupers dying in the streets and garbage dumps of Calcutta. Evangelical

daring is what Cardinal Bernardin reflected when he visited and forgave the one who

had accused him falsely. And evangelical daring is what Jesus revealed by freely

accepting and steadfastly embracing our human condition, transforming the scandal of

the cross into the throne of glory. And evangelical daring is what we must evidence if

we are to be successful in our efforts of evangelization.

Sixth, and, finally, as people who seek to transform our church and society, we

must be people of prayer. It has been suggested that the crisis of our age is a crisis of

spirituality. We have lost a sense of the transcendent; we have lost the art of

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contemplation; we have failed in our efforts to integrate liturgy and word, prayer and

service, faith and action. To be sure we’ve moved away from that monastic approach to

spirituality that dominated the life of our Church for many centuries. But we are still

struggling in our efforts to develop an authentic, apostolic spirituality; one which

enables us to harmonize our work and our prayer; one which enables us to be doers

who contemplate; one which prompts us to reflect upon the wonder of Father’s

creation, the beauty of the Redeemer’s love, and the presence of God’s spirit within

ourselves and others, and then, to translate this reflection into words and deeds that

speak to contemporary realities .

But we can only do this if we are people of prayer. For it is only in prayer that

we can touch base with the Lord. It is only in prayer that we can see ourselves as we

really are and as God sees us. And it is only in prayer that we can overcome the

unpleasant and frustrating aspects of our daily life and bring to those with whom we

live and work and then to whom we are called to serve the love of God whom we have

met and known in our own moments of prayerful reflection.

This is why we must pray regularly. For without prayer our lives will be empty

and our efforts to serve others will become totally bankrupt. Service and advocacy

without prayer, in other words only creates a false sense of security, rooted in the fickle

and fleeting ideas, values and opinions of human wisdom and failing to communicate

the life giving power and strength that only comes from the Lord God and the Good

News revealed to us in the person of Jesus.

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 Karl Rahner, arguably the most renowned Catholic theologian in the 20 th

Century put it this way, “There is only one road that leads to God, it is prayer. If

someone shows you another, you are being deceived.” The secret of all secrets, then, is

that prayer must be at the heart of living.

To the extent that our lives are rooted in a deep loving relationship with God,

nurtured and sustained by our personal and liturgical prayer, to that extent can we be

convincing without being arrogant, able to confront without being offensive, gentle and

forgiving without being soft, authentic role models and witnesses without being

manipulative.

I hope, then, that in the year ahead we will fulfill the mission of evangelization

by being people of vision, people who trust in God’s Providence, people who are flexible

and open to change; people who have a sense of humor, people who evidence

evangelical daring and people of prayer.

If we do, we can be assured that our life and service will truly give honor and

glory to God and bring hope, peace and betterment to God’s people.

God Bless you and Happy New Year.

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