Three Showers for Epiphany

During the Mass on the Feast of the Epiphany, as the priest was speaking, three thoughts came to mind. These just seized my consciousness, as if I had my own little epiphany as I was sitting there carrying a sleeping Giana on my aching right shoulder. I call them showers. 

First, I realized that it was men of wisdom and learning, who made it their business to determine the location and position of stars, who appeared (“epiphanized”) to offer tributes to the baby in the manger. Those who made the arduous journey were no ordinary menfolk, who easily could fall for all sorts of myths and legends. They spent their lives in the study of the cosmos, contributed to a significant portion of mankind’s accrued knowledge, and thereby advanced human civilization. They were the Wise Men; that description suffices.

Second, these were learned men who never stopped learning. Their journey took them to a manger in Bethlehem, but they did not stop there. They were now enriched with the truth they saw for themselves with their own eyes at that manger. They went on to the presence of Herod, they came back to their own country, and continued with their profession of studying. Learning is a journey that never ends.

Third and finally, although learning starts in the mind, it leads to the heart. The men of the Epiphany are the Wise Men who did not get lost relying on their mind’s knowledge of the stars, and yet that knowledge led them not to the finality of the mind’s acknowledgement, but to the eternity of God’s truth. Today, just as in the middle of the twentieth century, there is that central tension between faith and reason, between church and state, and between science and religion. The Epiphany reminds us that there is no such dichotomy, for what the mind can conceive, the heart can receive. The Wise Men saw the star that could guide them, followed it, and became all the more knowledgeable—in experience and cognition—by what they found. Learning, knowledge, science, reason—these things do not end in the laboratory, but done properly, lead to the same truths yearned for by faith, church, religion, history.

Our Lord came to us not just to change our minds but to touch our hearts. It sounds clichéd, until one understands its deeper formulation: He came to touch our hearts AND change our minds.