Meditation for Epiphany
“They fell down and worshipped.”
There is nothing more foreign to our contemporary world than the idea of worship, and yet, that is exactly what the Magi-Kings are all about. What is worship? The honouring and commitment to what is greater than yourself. There is no more wonderful an illustration and story of that than in the story of the end and the beginning of Christmas, what we call the Epiphany.
It signifies the Christmas of the Gentiles, to be sure, but even more it speaks to the deeper meaning of Christmas itself. It is about the real significance and meaning of the birth in Bethlehem. Christ is God with us. The Magi-Kings intuit and understand this. Their gifts are “sacred gifts of mystic meaning.” They are gifts that teach us about the radical meaning of Christmas.
They saw, they came, they worshipped. They are moved to a long and arduous journey, “the ways deep and the weather sharp, the worst time for a journey.” But isn’t that the point? We are all on a journey in and through the weather sharp and deep realities of our world and experience.
Epiphany awakens us to the splendour and glory of the Child Christ. The light now shines from within the world and not just from without. That will be the recurring theme of Epiphany, the theme of school and teaching that illumines the seeming meaningless of human life.
“They fell down and worshipped.”
Fr. David Curry
Short Meditation for Epiphany
January 6th, 2014
