A SERMON FOR THE 2nd SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY
Something remarkable has occurred
in the liturgical texts over the past week.
Something that happened so fast that we may be excused for having
overlooked it. We’re familiar with the
general layout of the liturgical cycle of course, as it follows the main events
in our Lord’s life. Currently we’re
celebrating the Christmas cycle, which we prepared for during Advent, before
launching into the momentous events surrounding our Lord’s birth—the Nativity
itself, the Circumcision and Naming of the Christ Child, the Epiphany, the Flight
into Egypt and Herod’s slaughter of the Holy Innocents. The Christmas season ends finally on February
2, with the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple—Candlemas.
But first, on these remaining
Sundays after Epiphany, we skip to the later events of our Lord’s life,
starting today with his first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana. The rest of the year will be devoted to what
our Lord did after this first
miracle, with the Easter cycle surrounding our Lord’s Passion, Death and
Resurrection, and then all those Sundays after Pentecost detailing the
teachings and miracles he manifested during the last three years of his life.
All that we know about our Lord
is contained in the events surrounding his Birth, Ministry, Death, Resurrection
and Ascension into heaven. These events
occupy the entirety of the Church’s year.
And yet, in reality they describe only the few weeks surrounding his Birth,
a few more surrounding his Death and Resurrection, and then the bulk of them
detailing his three-year ministry. In
other words our liturgical year occupies itself only with about a tenth of our
Lord’s 33-year life.
What happened during the other
nine-tenths of that life? That question brings
us back to the remarkable liturgical week we have just experienced. For everything that we know about those other
thirty years of our Lord’s life was contained in this past week.
Within the space of a day, from
last Saturday to last Sunday, we jumped forward twelve whole years, from the
Epiphany, the arrival of the three Wise Men at the manger of the newborn Christ
Child, to the finding of the Child Jesus in temple on the Feast of the Holy
Family. Between last Sunday and yesterday,
the Octave Day of Epiphany, we skipped another eighteen years to our Lord’s
Baptism by St. John in the River Jordan.
And now today, we celebrate the official start of our Lord’s final three-year
ministry at the Wedding Feast of Cana.
Thirty of the most important years of this world’s history, when the Son
of God dwelled amongst us, have managed to speed past us in the space of this
last nine days, like a video in fast forward.
What happened during that
time? What momentous events occurred
that the Gospel does not recount. The
Bible spends less time on this period of our Lord’s life than our liturgy, and
the only thing that God has chosen to reveal to us through holy Scripture, in
the 52nd and last verse of the second Chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel,
is that “Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with
God and men.”
That’s not much
information, is it? Some of it seems
almost redundant even—we can figure out for ourselves that he advanced in age
for example as he got older! But those
words are there for a reason. They show
that our Lord is like us, “in all things except sin” as St. Paul tells us. They show that even though this man is the
Son of God, a divine being, he is at the same time a human being just like you
and me.
And here is a
great mystery! That in this single
person of Christ, we have someone who is both God and Man. He isn’t a confused mixture of both, like a
cake made of different ingredients, but he is entirely God and entirely Man,
two natures united in Christ. This union
of God and man has a theological name, which I’ll remind you of so that you’ll
remember what it is. It’s called the Hypostatic
Union, and refers only to this one single phenomenon of the two natures of Christ,
miraculously fused into this one Person who was born of God and of Mary.
This is why St.
Luke tells us that our Lord “grew in age” as he got older. He wanted us to know that he was physically
the same as us, born an infant, subject to his parents as a child, and finally fulfilling
his life’s mission as a man. He grew in
age because he had a body like us. He
grew in wisdom because he had a mind like us.
And he grew in grace with God and man because he had a soul—like
us. At Christmas we learned he was born
like us, at the Circumcision we learned that he could bleed like us, and on
Good Friday we will see that he can die like us.
To look at and
listen to, Christ was no different from you and me. If we had a videotape of our Lord, we wouldn’t
see him with a halo shining round his head, he wouldn’t be speaking with a big
booming voice like the voice of God in “The Ten Commandments.” And yet he was that same God, he was the true
Light of the world, shining forth in his words, his deeds, his example, that
the people who walked in darkness might see a great light.
There are many things
to consider about this great mystery of the Hypostatic Union. Today I want to mention to you only one of
them. That is the infinite humility of Christ, in
that, being God, he would take upon himself the inglorious form of a human
being, with all our frailty, our ability to suffer and die, and yes, even our
ability to be tempted and to fall into sin.
He did suffer, he did die, he was tempted. The only difference between him and us is
that he did not fall into temptation
and commit sin. And yet he knew what it
was to suffer temptation, he understood, as a Man, what it feels like to want
to gratify the fallen human nature that he possessed, and thus offend the
divine nature of his Father in heaven.
What a strange and humiliating experience that must have been for the
human nature of Christ to be tempted to offend his own divine nature! And yet he chose to take on this repugnant
human nature. It is the greatest example
of humility we can ever envisage, that the infinite and almighty God should choose
to be enclosed in a human body. And yet,
out of love for fallen mankind, he made that choice. It shows us that humility is the first step
on the path of love.
Humility is the
essence of the Christmas story. The
first step on the path of love. And what’s
the next step on that path of love?
Sacrifice. In the weeks to come
we’ll be seeing the full extent of the sacrifice that Christ made for us. But that’s another story. For now, let’s just use this week that has
past, this week when Christ disappears from view to focus on his humility. And one last thought if I may, let’s not
forget Christ’s Blessed Mother, she who was so instrumental in every step of
her Son’s humble path. It was in the
womb of our Lady that Christ first dwelled on this earth, it was she who gave
birth to him, nursed him and taught him to speak and walk. It was our Lady who, with St. Joseph, fled
with him to Egypt, who sought him and found him in the temple. It was our Lady who initiated our Lord’s
ministry in today’s Gospel, when she informed him “They have no wine.” So as our Lord re-emerges today from the
obscurity of a childhood spent with his mother, a childhood in which, in his
humility, he was “subject” to her, let’s pray to the Blessed Mother to give us
the kind of humility her Son showed during all those hidden years of his life—a
story only she can tell.
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