Second Sunday after Christmas 2010
Reflections: The world has great trouble with the earthy reality of the Incarnation. Even contemporary denominational and non-denominational Christian churches prefer the image of a “Christ consciousness” … sort of a nice bundle of good feelings and good intentions … to the inconceivably dense reality of a baby boy carrying the fullness of God and humanity. It is so much easier to prefer the warm and fuzzy “aahh…” inside our hearts and bellies than to bow down before the Lord of Heaven. We should remember that the Wise Men didn’t come to say “awhhh”. They came to bow down and worship. They knew Whom they were kneeling and prostrate before.
How do we grasp this? Worshipping a baby?! It’s understandable that the world doesn’t get it or really want to. No intellectual effort, no matter how supercharged can encompass it. On the one hand we have the frailest being in our human life experience … and on the other we have the Lord and Creator of all. Those extreme polar points are like book ends of the story of our journey with God. And all the in between we will have all of eternity to read.
For us, it begins in the birth of Jesus Christ as a baby boy … and then journeys towards God Almighty, and the Throne of Jesus Christ. This is all part of the unfolding Epiphany … the great revealing of our Lord among us. Sunday we read the Propers of the Vigil of the Epiphany. Wednesday is the actual Epiphany Day. Wednesday Mass we will celebrate it, and next Sunday we will celebrate further His revealing in the First Sunday after Epiphany. It’s all to guide us into seeing Him as He really is … so that we are not confused about Who He is and who we are in relation to Him. Try spending a day or even a few hours holding in your minds the Ultimate Truth of Who He is … and that He is your Lord and Savior. It might just change everything for you.
………….
“Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”
A Bible memory verse: Collect Christmas II: “Grant that the same light enkindled in our hearts may shine forth in our lives.”
Wednesdays: the Feast of the Epiphany, Evening Prayer 5:45, Low Mass 6pm, and Bible study 6:45 on the Gospel of St. John (picking up at John 3:21).
This Feast is considered a Day of Obligation.
Next Sunday January 10th, First Sunday after Epiphany, Morning Prayer at 9:30am; Choral Mass at 11am.