Day: January 17, 2021

“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”

This too is epiphany, “this beginning of signs,” as John tells us. It is a wonderful encounter again between Mary and Jesus, a most intriguing exchange. But what is the epiphany? What is being made known in the encounter between Mary and Jesus and between us and Jesus? How is this encounter philosophical? I want to try to redeem the idea of this encounter from what is simply existential or personal but only so as to give a proper place for the personal and the existential. It has really altogether to do with the universal which is made known through the particularities of this encounter.

Epiphany complements Advent in terms of the importance of the give-and-take of questions. Questions are about our active engagement with the idea, the quintessential philosophical idea, that there is a principle of intellection. This is the idea of knowledge itself, that things in principle are knowable. All our claims to knowledge hang on the idea of a prior principle of knowledge. How we know that we know and what we claim to know presupposes that there is knowledge, something to be known in some sense or another. I say in some sense or another because that principle is known only as the principle upon which our knowing, being, and doing depend. That, I think, is what this remarkable story shows. The encounter between Mary and Jesus is about our encounter with truth, the truth of God which is always there, always present. This story is about our awakening to that truth and its meaning for us in our lives.

Thus, the encounter is in this sense philosophical. It has to do with our coming to know what is wanted for us to know, indeed, what God wants us to know. Such is the radical meaning of the entire Epiphany season. The questions are paramount and necessary because nothing can be known except through the activity of knowing. “Knowledge is intermediate between the knower and the known because it is the activity of the knower concerning the known” (Ammonius, 6th c. AD.). This ancient insight, itself a kind of summary of Hellenic and Greek thought, challenges us. The burden of the teaching church is that it counters the dreary passivity of the consumer culture, the victim culture, and the entitlement culture, all of which are a denial of an essential feature of our humanity.

Mary’s anxious questions to Jesus on Sunday last lead us logically to this exchange. Both Gospels are read every year regardless of the length of the Epiphany season which like the Trinity season varies in length according to the movable date of Easter. Thus, these Gospel stories taken together are significant for our understanding of the radical meaning of Epiphany. This story suggests that Mary has learned what we too are meant to learn about the essential divinity of Christ, namely, what it means for him to be “about [his] Father’s business”. Here is “the beginning of signs”. Here is Mary’s response to Jesus, her openness to the divine will by way of what belongs to the radical truth of our humanity symbolised and realised in her. It is captured in our text. “Whatever he tells you, do it.”

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