Sunday Reflection: Fr Robin Gibbons on Feast of the Epiphany

Greek Orthodox Bishop Nikandros throws cross to divers in Epiphany ceremony - Wiki

In recent years the way we use our Christmas break has changed significantly, a lot of people now tend to take off either before or after New Year and travel to foreign lands. Some seek the ice and snow for skiing and winter sports, others journey south to warmer climes where the sunshine drives out the grey sky and damp cold. Of course the vast majority of us stay put and all of us return to work, hopefully restored a little, but even so we begin to cast our thoughts and minds to future breaks. I think it’s very natural, winter around this time of year can be very depressing once festivities are over, we all need something to look forward to, something to cheer us up a bit.

Maybe that’s part of the magic of the Magi, the feast of the Epiphany, the manifestation of light in darkness, for it is both an ending and a beginning. In a real sense it ends our holidays but it is also a beginning, for it celebrates the way in which we journey onwards into daily life, following our star, looking forward to new encounters, discovering within ourselves and others our gifts to share with the Christ we meet in others!

In the Western Church this feast concentrates on the coming of the Magi, the revelation of the divine child and the presentation of gifts to the Christ, with that very real hint of menace in Herod’s behaviour. We can identify with this in our own faith journey, we too have to seek the divine one and deal with the presence of evil in life. In the symbols of the three gifts we can draw strength.

Gold stands for true obedience which is mutual encounter and discernment between ourselves and God. Frankincense is the mystery of faith encountered in prayer and praise, in the offering of our own lives as sacrifices of love, and Myrrh? Though it is associated with anointing and death of Jesus, it has tremendous connections with our own anointing by the Spirit at Baptism and confirmation, when we died to sin and rose with Christ to the sure and certain hope of eternal life. This great feast reveals to us that Christ our light, the morning star which never sets, is always with us!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.