A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 8, n. 6)
Epiphany of the Lord, Year C – January 3, 2010 *
“God Manifest in Jesus Christ”
BIBLE READINGS
Is 60:1-6 // Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6 // Mt 2:1-12
(N.B. Series 8 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year C from the perspective of the Second Reading. For reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year C based on the Gospel reading, please scroll up to the “ARCHIVES” above and open Series 2. For reflections based on the Old Testament reading, open Series 5.)
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
We continue to celebrate Christmas with joy and contemplate the stupendous mystery of the Word of God made flesh. With today’s feast of the Lord’s Epiphany we celebrate the revelation of the divine glory and its full manifestation to the nations through Jesus Christ. The feast of Epiphany celebrates God’s unlimited glory, shining from east to west, illuminating all creation. Epiphany is the tremendous manifestation of divinity through the humanity of Christ. To get to the heart of this feast we need to listen attentively and meditate on today’s Second Reading (Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6). Saint Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, asserts that God’s loving plan of universal salvation is now fully revealed in the divine Son Jesus Christ.
Graziano and Nacy Marcheschi comment: “Paul has received a revelation unknown to former generations. God’s own Spirit has inspired the deep insight Paul now clearly enunciates: Gentiles have become coheirs with the Jews. This was an unsettling thought to many of the early Jewish followers of Christ. Jesus was the Messiah, come to save Israel. But Paul explains that in Christ, Gentiles and Jews are members of the same body. Through the preaching of the Gospel, Gentiles receive a share in the promises of Christ. For Jewish Christians, this news was like hearing the reading of a will and learning that the inheritance isn’t all yours, but to be shared with others you didn’t know were part of the family.”
The Christmas mystery we celebrate entails a continuing “epiphany”. God the Father’s universal saving plan, revealed dramatically in the incarnation of his Son Jesus Christ and brought to completion through the latter’s paschal sacrifice on the cross, demands the ongoing work of ”epiphany”. The mission of the Church and of all Christians is to be an “epiphany” – to be the manifestation in today’s world of God’s unconditional love for all.
The authors of the Days of the Lord, vol. 1, remark: “The whole Bible witnesses that God’s plan is to bring together all people and indeed all things into unity. Only then will God be fully manifested. In the meantime, the history of the world and the Church is that of developing epiphany and therefore a mystery that is revealed each day.”
In this Christmas-Epiphany season, I wish to share with you two stories of a modern-day “epiphany”. One is narrated personally by the Maryknoll priest, Leo Shea (cf. MARYKNOLL, April 2009, p. 7). The other one is about Sr. Bridget Haase, an Ursuline nun (cf. John Feister in ST. ANTHONY MESSENGER, December 2009, p. 30-31). The remarkable life-witness of these two “teachers” would inspire us to be instruments of God’s ongoing “epiphany”. Both Fr. Leo and Sr. Bridget have become an “epiphany” - a “manifestation” and radiant witness of the presence of God in the world today.
When I went to northern China to teach English at a university, I was told I had to respect the government’s rules: I could not work as a missioner, could not offer Mass in public nor serve in a parish or preach. On Sundays, I went to Mass with the people in the cathedral in Qingdao (which, incidentally, was packed for the two Masses). I resolved that if asked, I would answer truthfully, but not once was I asked what I did before I came to China.
I enjoyed the fellowship of the professors and students whom I invited to come to my apartment once a week, to share a meal. We never discussed religion, but simply enjoyed wonderful rapport and camaraderie. Therefore, when I was leaving, I was greatly surprised to receive the gift of a beautiful painting of the Last Supper. My work as a missioner was solely my witness to them by my presence. I never preached a word, and yet they knew all along.
***
Sister Bridget Haase has been a teacher all along, from her first class of 40 first-graders (“hardly room for a desk, but it was a wonderful year!” she says) to less typical assignments. Those started with a TV show, Charles Kuralt’s Christmas in Appalachia, in the mid-1970s. She watched the show and felt a voice in her heart. “I’m a person who always follows my heart, because that’s where God speaks to us”, she says. The next summer, on break from her Illinois teaching assignment, Sister Bridget spent a few weeks as a volunteer, teaching Bible school at a Glenmary parish outreach in eastern Kentucky. She returned to Appalachia the next summer, and felt her heart telling her that she should move into full-time ministry in the mountains.
She and another sister were assigned the following year to work “up Sandylick Holler” near Dunlow, West Virginia. She lived for five years in a converted three-room shed heated, not uncommonly for the area, with a wood stove. “We shared an outhouse with our beloved neighbor, Bird”, she fondly recalls.
There were no Catholic schools in that region; in fact, in rural West Virginia, Catholics were suspect. Bridget went to volunteer her teaching skills at the public school and was rejected. “I was a Catlick,” she recalls. “I finally asked the principal if I could have all the children that the other teachers didn’t want, who I noticed sitting in the back of the room, just coloring all day long.” The principal hesitated, but eventually relented. “I think they grew in trust of who I was, and then I was able to teach.” She earned the title “Church Lady” from the locals.
She had plenty of humorous stories from her time in the hills, like when Bird, in an act of kindness to the sisters, hunted squirrels and lined the outhouse seat with fur for cold days. (Bridget delicately persuaded him to move the skins to the wall.) Her most touching story, though, is of a family, some of the very poor, who are typically rejected even locally as “white trash”, a term that plays on racism as well as poverty.
Bridget went, by invitation, “up the holler” (hollow) to have Thanksgiving dinner at Delana and Elam’s house with their five young children. The house was less than meager and the meat at dinner was questionable, but Bridget ate. Afterward Delana said to Bridget, “I mean hain’t never, never anyone come to our home for a meal and never, ever on Thanksgiving Day. But you done come, and Miss Bridget, I don’t have to look anywhere else for Jesus. He done come to our home and he stands in front of us.”
When she heard that, says Bridget, “It shifted everything.” She had tried to see God in the poor, but now the tables were turned. “The poor had seen God in me”, she recalls. “And I realized through Delana and Elam, this is what life’s all about. I see God in you. You see God in me. We are God-bearers, and everything is a reflection of God … It doesn’t have to do with who you are, what you’re doing; it has to do with the fact that God is present here in this moment.”
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
Do we truly believe Isaiah’s prophecy that “the glory of the Lord shines upon you”? Do the affirmation of a radiant future and the vision of a resplendent Jerusalem encourage you in difficult situations and comfort you in moments of trial?
In what way were the magi instruments of divine epiphany? Do you endeavor to be like the magi in their positive, wholehearted response to God’s epiphany?
Do you treasure the gift of universal salvation? Do you truly welcome the rich texture and the deep colorful hues of a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic community of faith? How do you respond to the task and challenge of a developing and ongoing “epiphany”?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: Loving Father,
we thank you for the stupendous Christmas gift you have given us:
your dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ,
the “Word incarnate” and the “God manifest”.
We respond to your goodness with awe and homage.
In Jesus is the “epiphany” of your tremendous love beyond telling.
He is the manifestation and the fulfillment
of your divine plan to save all peoples and creation.
We give you glory and praise
for the miracle of Christmas and the grace of the Epiphany.
Let Christ be born in our hearts day by day.
Make us instruments
of the ongoing work of “epiphany”
in today’s wounded, suffering world.
In our life of Christian witnessing,
help us to make the joy of Christmas
and the splendor of the Epiphany
be felt by all.
We love you and serve you,
now and forever.
Assembly: Amen.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“The Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body and co-partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.” (Eph 3:6)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
ACTION PLAN: In this feast of the Lord’s Epiphany, endeavor to let the presence of the Lord be felt by the people around you. By your works of charity and acts of justice and peace, be a participant in the ongoing “epiphany” of Christ in today’s world.
ACTION PLAN: That we may truly be a Church in a continual “epiphany” of the Lord’s glory, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR: A Weekly Pastoral Tool (Year C, vol. 6, # 6).
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US