Month: January 2026

“They went up to Jerusalem”

Epiphany marks the transition from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. They are the two centers, as in an ellipse, to use a mathematical and astronomical image, around which the Christian understanding constantly revolves. The mystery of Christmas is thus not simply eclipsed, past and gone with the event of Epiphany. Kepler’s use of the ellipse to explain planetary motion was probably the greater revolution so-called in terms of early modern natural philosophy, far more significant than Copernicus and Galileo. For it broke the dominance of the distinction between terrestrial or rectilinear motion and circular motion, and especially the hold that circular motion had for more than a thousand years. Yet it didn’t mean that the beauty of the idea of circular motion was lost from thought, particularly theological thinking about God and about the journey of our minds to God and with God.

Likewise Bethlehem remains constantly with us in the journey to Jerusalem just as Jerusalem is a constant presence in the Christmas story. The wise men, the Magoi from Anatolia, come to Bethlehem, after all, by way of Jerusalem. With their coming to Bethlehem, Christmas is omni populo, for all people; thus there is the continuation of Christmas, of Bethlehem, with us. The gifts they bring inaugurate the idea of gift-giving at Christmas and inform the essential meaning of Epiphany not just as event but as teaching. The gifts teach and thus belong to the manifestation, the making known of the essential divinity of Jesus Christ; the main theme of the Epiphany season.

The readings on The First Sunday after Epiphany within The Octave of the Epiphany signal this new and different focus that belongs to Epiphany. There is a turn, as Bishop John Cosin (17th c. Durham) puts it, from “His coming in the flesh that was God” to “His being God that was come in the flesh”; a shift in focus and emphasis in our thinking, namely, “to turn ourselves from his humanity below to his divinity above.”

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“Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east,
and are come to worship him”

Epiphany means manifestation; in this case, the making known to us of the high things of God. It is more than just the ending, a kind of afterglow, of Christmas. It inaugurates a new emphasis and highlights the beginnings of a new journey, the journey of the understanding. It begins with a question: “where is he that is born King of the Jews?”

Epiphany reveals the deeper understanding of God made man in Christ Jesus. It catapults us into a kind of theological reasoning, namely, our thinking upon the nature of God made manifest “in substance of our mortal flesh”, as the Proper Preface for Epiphany states about God who is Eternal Light and Truth. This echoes the Proper Preface of Christmas that Christ “was made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin.” God is made known in the very substance of our humanity.

Epiphany is, above all else, teaching. The teaching is about the essential divinity of Jesus Christ, the sine qua non of Christian understanding. John Cosin, the 17th century Bishop of Durham, captures best the intellectual sensibility of Epiphany. Our thinking, he says, now turns from “His coming in the flesh that was God” to “His being God that was come in the flesh”; in short, “to turn ourselves from his humanity below to his divinity above.” Epiphany marks this shift of perspective in terms of the nature of divinity unfolded before us through what we are taught about God by God.

In Matthew’s account (and it is only from Matthew that we have the journey of the Μαγοι from Anatolia), they come seeking, following a star from the east. They come from outside of Israel, as Gentiles, meaning non-Israelites, yet seeking, as they say, “he that is born King of the Jews”, whose star they have seen. Once again, this signals the theme of universality. With Epiphany, Christmas is omni populo, for all people. As such there are really two journeys that belong to the mystery of the Epiphany: their journey to Bethlehem and, then, their journey from Bethlehem, “departing into their own country another way”, as Matthew puts it.

Epiphany marks the break-out from Bethlehem in the continuing journey of the understanding that belongs to the fullness of the truth and dignity of our humanity. What that journey to and from Bethlehem means is signalled by them. They come, they say, “to worship him”.

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