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Tuesday, January 10, 2017

“THE EPIPHANY — GOD'S GREAT MANIFESTATION”




 
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“THE EPIPHANY — GOD'S GREAT MANIFESTATION”
 
Greetings from Father Bob ...
 
On January 8th we celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany. We call them the three Wise Men or Three Kings, but there is one important fact about them that we often overlook. They were outsiders and not people of the covenant, not sons of Abraham. Yet they were among the first to come to the stable.

They are like the Samaritan leper in the New Testament who was cured and came back to give thanks. He was an outsider. Or the Syrian woman, a pagan, who bantered with Jesus for her daughter's health and got it. She was an outsider. The Samaritan woman at the well who had five husbands and the Roman Centurion who testified on Calvary that "surely this was God's son," were outsiders.

They are all biblical foreigners just like the Magi. So what do they all tell us, these outsiders? They tell us simply and profoundly that no one is excluded from the love of God. In a sense, we are all foreigners. Some consider themselves out of the social loop or sinful. Some are addicted and carry shameful deeds and betrayals.

Some are unforgiving, vengeful or alienated in a hundred different ways and consider themselves moral outsiders. But the Magi story tells us there is room for all of us - male, female, addicted or free, faithful or faithless, saint or sinner.

James Joyce sums it up best when he says – "Here comes everybody." Because it is everybody. Outsiders of all sorts are welcomed to the grace and love found in Jesus Christ.

The Epiphany is God's great manifestation. The light of the world is here deep inside of you, around you, above you and below you. God is here and we must reveal that startling fact in our lives. God is here. Let your life announce it.
Father Bob Warren, SA Yours in Christ,
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Father Bob Warren, SA

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