In this episode, Fr. Stephen and John reflect on the oft-overlooked Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord. They shed light on the intricacies of this feast, which is rich in history and spiritual significance but frequently finds itself overshadowed by the preceding Christmas festivities. Their dialogue traverses the liturgical complexities stemming from Christmas's fixed date to the profound implications of the Epiphany of the Lord in January, a day brimming with divine revelations.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
In this episode, Fr. Stephen and John reflect on the oft-overlooked Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord. They shed light on the intricacies of this feast, which is rich in history and spiritual significance but frequently finds itself overshadowed by the preceding Christmas festivities. Their dialogue traverses the liturgical complexities stemming from Christmas's fixed date to the profound implications of the Epiphany of the Lord in January, a day brimming with divine revelations.
Have something you'd love to hear Fr. Stephen and John talk about? Email us at myfriendthefriar@gmail.com or click here!
Welcome to the my Friend the Friar podcast and thanks for listening. If you like my Friend the Friar and want to support us, please consider subscribing or following us. If you haven't already done so, and if you found us on YouTube, then don't forget to click the notification bell when you subscribe so you'll be notified of new episodes when they release. Thanks again and God bless. Welcome to the podcast. I'm joining me and my friend the Friar, father Stephen Sanchez, a Discalce Carmelite Priest. Good afternoon, father.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is afternoon, isn't?
Speaker 1:that weird and we're joined by. Joining us is Birthday, birthday. Do you remember back when we started doing this and I was, I couldn't get over how to say joining me is Father Stephen. I was like joined by, joined with, with, accompanied by whatever, yeah, ooh, accompanied by. Sounds nice, john Lee accompanied by Father Stephen Sanchez. It really is Father Stephen Sanchez accompanied by John.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is your stuff, this is your thing.
Speaker 1:You're funny, All right. This is maybe. I don't know when we're going to release this, but this is probably going to be the last episode we record in 2023.
Speaker 2:Yes, because.
Speaker 1:Yeah, are you ready for the new year?
Speaker 2:No, but I wasn't ready for the last one either, so yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:Never ready. I guess it is the new year already for us Christians.
Speaker 2:Yes, we started with Christ the King the new, the last week of ordinary time, I mean the last, yeah, the last week of ordinary time before Advent. So we're almost, yeah, we're a month in already. We're a month into the new year.
Speaker 1:So what are we talking about this new year?
Speaker 2:You mean this last episode of the old year before we start the new year. The old new year, the new year, the new year.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine if we were Chinese too? Because then we would have like three new years all wrapped in at the same time, like different stages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. If I were 18, I might enjoy it, but at this point no.
Speaker 1:Have a hard enough time with the whole. Just one. Yeah, the whole meta time, the what are the terms for like an Advent, when it's like Chyros and Chronos? Yeah, I have a hard enough time with that. I can't handle multiple Chronos at the same time.
Speaker 2:Well being. We've done the Advent theme and the two parts of Advent and I think one of the celebrations that doesn't get a lot of attention, we kind of sort of pass by, is Epiphany, and it was a very important, is still a very important celebration. But I think we it gets lost, I think probably because of Christmas and everybody gets tired and dealing with the joy of family and the anxiety and dysfunction that comes with that. So Epiphany can get a little lost and so in our church we celebrate usually Epiphany. The set date is January 6th, but sometimes Epiphany comes, is celebrated on the Sunday before or the Sunday closest to the 6th. So it gets really strange and a lot of what it has to do with having the set date of Christmas on the 25th. So, for example, if you have Christmas on Saturday and it's the 25th, then Sunday would be the Sunday within the octave of Christmas, which then that would be like Holy Family, which then you get rid of a whole week of Christmas and it gets really strange. So it gets very complicated.
Speaker 2:So anyway, I want to talk a little bit about Epiphany. In the Eastern and Western churches it is celebrated and it's celebrated for us in the Sunday closest, as I said, the closest to January 6th, and in the Eastern church it is celebrated on January 6th period. Back before they started switching these things, it was a holy day of obligation and so, no matter who it was, it would celebrate it on the 6th, just like Corpus Christi was usually on the Thursday. But they've changed those things around, so things get even more complicated. Thank you, whoever the, I want to start with reading the collect or the opening prayer for Epiphany from the Roman Missal, and I apologize for my nasally voice. I'm getting past the lunch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're sick again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you Jesus. It's just another thorn, anyway, the colic of Epiphany from the Roman Missal, oh God, who on this day revealed your only begotten son to the nations by the guidance of a star granting your mercy, that we who know you already by faith may be brought to behold the beauty of your sublime glory". Okay, so that's the opening prayer for Epiphany, or the colic, right? Um, is that Lenny?
Speaker 1:No, it's Boogie. I'm getting visited by all the cats today. Hey, boogie, she's rubbing on the microphone, so I don't know if that's going to be making a bunch of noise, but we'll figure that Sorry.
Speaker 2:So in our everyday use the word Epiphany kind of suggests an enlightenment, some sort of enlightenment, and it can range anything from the mundane to the profound, like in graphics it would be a light bulb turning on in a thought bubble, so kind of like ah dang.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's kind of like an Epiphany and enlightenment, right. So the thing, whatever things you were considering, come into sharper focus and you understand the why of it, or you remember something, or things make sense, right. So that's kind of the way we use Epiphany now. In Greek literature, an Epiphany referred to a visible manifestation of a divine or superhuman being who is considered invisible through ordinary observation. So, for example, for us in our sacred history, so when Epiphanus IV, the one who desecrated the temple and the Maccabees revolted against when he took his name, it meant that he, epiphanus, was the manifestation of the divine being. So again, it's about a manifestation.
Speaker 2:Again, it's not such a stretch in terms of a king taking that title. It's not a big surprise, since the term was used in connection with monarchs and emperors in the East for generations upon their crowning. So the king, the queen, the emperor, the empress was seen as some manifestation of the divine. So I think in the Oriental, I think the Japanese emperor was known as the son of heaven, right? Or the empress would be the daughter of heaven, right. There's always some connection to divinity Somehow, that whole idea of rulers being a ruler over people. There's something about divinity associated with that. But also we should recall the fact that the word that we get the evangelist from, evangelion, which means good news, originally it was used in connection with the emperor or the king's good news, which could have been a victorious battle or the birth of a child or something newsworthy in the life of the monarch. So what's happened is that we take those civic or secular words and terms and they're applied then to our sacred history and they take on a different meaning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, didn't. Whichever Caesar was Caesar during the time of Jesus, right? He was the son of God, right? Or did he call himself the son of man, I can't remember. But basically, when Luke is saying things like Jesus son of man or whatever, it's kind of like a jab at Caesar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the same thing with the good news, right, like this is the good news. I'm straight poking a fight, right? No, that's not good news. This is good news, right and so, for example, that the the terms that we use to address Jesus Christ and as King of Kings, lord of Lords, that used to be used by Caesar himself and the emperors they would call themselves these extreme titles right and so that's part of the whole idea is understanding what the original secular meaning was and how it then applies to the faith life in a Christian understanding. Right for us as believers, right so?
Speaker 1:so epiphany, the, the Greek guy always always thought, is I mean, who knows how to? There's somebody out there who knows how to say his name properly? Maybe you're saying it right, maybe I'm saying it right, I don't know. But you know, hercules just ends with that ease sound Mm-hmm. I always just said his name like that, like epiphany's epiphany's. And and Maccabees, because it kind of rhymed in my head. But so the epiphany there, or he's taking his name as in like, he is the visible Sign of the invisible divinity correct.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so is that where we're gonna get the underlying theme of this Celebration in our church? Yes, that's Jesus is the epiphany, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, okay, yes. And again, this is a Greek term and so it's now, when it's used within a liturgical Space, right. It takes on a different, a different meaning, like example, even when we started talking about liturgy and how the Turgian was actually a Public service, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was just thinking about that. That's funny.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so it's a public service, but all of a sudden, now, within the Sphere of belief and the church, liturgy on, or liturgy is. Yeah it's a public service, but it's a service of worshiping God as we come together. And so, yeah, it has all these different roots. So this word study right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So anyway, excuse me. So, getting back to the epiphany, it was first used in a Christian sense by St Paul of both the first and final comings of Christ in his letter to Timothy. So Paul would refer to the epiphany of the incarnation and the epiphany of Christ's final coming in glory. The word was soon used of the miracles of Christ as well, that the miracles of Christ were Manifestations, they were epiphanies, they were manifestations of divine power. And Then, within the liturgy, the use of the word epiphany embraces all of these things. It means a Manifestation of Christ power and manif-, it means a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, it means the incarnation, it means Jesus as the epiphany of God. So it's multi levels right. It has a multivalent meanings.
Speaker 2:In the Eastern churches this feast is also called the Feast of Lights, because it was on this day, on epiphany, that baptism was conferred. Thus the Enlightenment of the baptized with the light of faith was this feast of lights. And, as I mentioned in one of our episodes, advent in the east had a penitential aspect to it Because it was the time of preparation for baptism, during the time of epiphany and the celebration of the baptism of the Lord. So that's where we get that color purple for Advent is that there's still sort of a leftover kind of idea of Penitence for us. It's sort of like we're Waiting in a state of penance or repentance, waiting for the final coming. So there's that Kind of a purple color there and that comes from the east, from that preparation which was there, which is kind of like a mini lent for them as they prepared for baptism.
Speaker 2:So this is an again an old, old celebration. Clement of Alexandria, who died around 215, mentions that there was a commemoration of Christ's baptism Celebrated on January 6th. So, early on the the community of faith felt that there was a need to celebrate some of these events of Christ's life in a special way, these events that were handed on to us by the apostles and the evangelists. So then, the celebration of the Feast of Epiphany Embraces many things. So it embraces Christ's nativity, it embraces the adoration of the Magi, it embraces Christ's baptism in the Jordan and also the miracle at Cana.
Speaker 2:Turning water into wine. So all these different Events is some type of epiphany or manifestation of Christ's divinity? In the east, the original focus was on the nativity and At that time, you know, december 25th was had not become the universal date to celebrate Christmas yet, so they were celebrating the nativity in January. And this also explains why Eastern churches in Palestine Did not want to accept the Roman Feast of December 25th, since they already had a, a celebration of the nativity in January likes. Why do we need this? So now some of the, the controversy or the difficulty in coming to a universal agreement on a date for the Nativity, and, and in the Syrian churches, again in the east, the, the object, they did celebrate the epiphany, but the, the focus, was the birth, the baptism and the adoration. So they had a multi-level folk, folk, foci, fokie, I Can't think right now. Focuses, focuses.
Speaker 1:Focus I, who knows man foci.
Speaker 2:Yeah but but what? One of the commentators I think her name is Christine, christine, christine, mormon, and it's Mormon, m-o-h-r-m-a-n, not M-O-R-M-O-N, so Mormon she was a liturgical commentator. She claims that epiphany was an idea feast from the beginning and admitted any manifestation of the divine power of Christ. So this was something that made me kind of pause and think about feasts of ideas. Like that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Of course, you know, it's kind of sort of something that you intuit and it's not until you see it or somebody says it you go like, yeah, that's what it is. And so epiphany is not so much a historical event as much as it is the idea of God revealing himself in a more definitive way in Jesus Christ and, of course, in a completely definitive way when Christ comes in glory. So there's something again for us to think about too, because I think the epiphany, the idea of the epiphany, the idea that God erupts into human history, and it is this, you know, the immaculate virginal conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary, and that this is really true God and true man, and what does that mean? And he has broken human history and has pitched his tent among us. All those different things are things that are awesome, yeah, and marvelous, right.
Speaker 1:That is interesting, especially since the was it the Syrian church you said kind of focused on those three the birth, the baptism and the adoration by the Magi, and so it's also the whole light bulb comment you made at the beginning is kind of cracking me up, because it's like the festival of lights or what did you say?
Speaker 2:celebration of lights, the festival of lights.
Speaker 1:And it's a light bulb. So now I'm never gonna forget what this holiday is about because it's gonna stick in my head, but that it is. There's all these concepts which are intertwined in all the different celebrations and all the different holidays and they it's easy, I guess, to lose sight of some of them with the busyness depending on the holiday right, like Advent and Christmas is, culturally at least, as well as very busy, easter is a busy lint. Sometimes lint just kind of passes people by, depending on how engaged they are. But there's all these concepts, they're everywhere, right Throughout the whole calendar year, and to give them a place to breathe, I think is a really interesting right Cause, like Christmas is an octave, there's a lot conceptually going on, but just giving it a specific day, I like it.
Speaker 1:It makes sense to me.
Speaker 2:And it made me reflect on the old Him, a Christmas hymn, the 12 days of Christmas.
Speaker 2:So it's not just one day of Christmas, it's 12 days of Christmas, it's from the nativity to epiphany, right, and so like, ah, okay, so, yeah, that makes sense, and so I think a lot of it, too, has to do with the fact that it's easy to pass over something that's familiar, right, and so this is part of the familiarity of these celebrations, and whether it's Christmas or Easter or epiphany, or whether it's Lent or Advent or, you know, merry Mother of God, whatever it may be, because we celebrate it on a regular basis and it's a continual cycle of celebrations, it's easy for us to pass over the familiarity of the year and not really stop and think about what is it that I'm really celebrating, what is it that the church is really making a declaration of in this particular celebration?
Speaker 2:And I always tell people like, whenever we celebrate anything, whether it's a feast of Christ or a feast of one of the saints or a feast of Mary, it is celebrating something about ourselves too, because we're all connected as a community, so we are joined to the head, and so there is something about this that has to do with my life as a believer, as a disciple, traveling in space and time, awaiting the final coming of Christ in glory, but that it has something to do with me, my journey in connection to everyone else's journey as well. We're all connected in our journeys. I think that's part of the reason it's important for us to pause and reflect on some of these celebrations. And again, this is something that developed over time and it will continue to develop as we continue to move forward right in terms of understanding what it means and understanding what is the epiphany have to do in the 24th, 25th century. But what is this really about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're saying, speaking as we travel through time, right, you're saying that the different churches there seem to be arguments about this, because this seemed to have been established prior to the Easter, the Nativity.
Speaker 2:The December 25th, right before the war is over.
Speaker 1:I don't know about Easter, so where, historically, does this show up compared to Easter and Christmas?
Speaker 2:This particular all of these things started coming up about the same time, right? So we have the Easter controversy. I forget when the Easter controversy was, but that was like the 200s. So this particular controversy and again I think part of it has to do with the fact that, as we're waiting for Jesus to come, like any day now, any day now, and so like a thief in the night?
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, and I think part of it is. As the community finds itself continuing its journey in space and time, it decides that it's important. Obviously, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it's important to celebrate some of these events in Christ's life. So in the West, in our church in the West, the feast is first comes into the West in around 383. It's in Northern Italy. Right is where it is first found.
Speaker 2:And I said before Clement of Alexandria, who died in the year 215, he mentioned that there was already a celebration of Christ's baptism already on January 6th. So already it was around. So there's, these celebrations are there and they're local celebrations and they wind up gaining importance and then a national importance and then they eventually get a universal importance and they're something that the universal church celebrates. So in Northern Italy it came in in the late 300s. It was also found in the church in Gaul in France.
Speaker 2:The epiphany was celebrated on January 6th and that was before, again before the establishment of December 25th as Christmas, for example, for us in the West. After December 25th was established as an activity, all of a sudden, on the 26th, you have the martyrdom of Stephen. Well, the martyrdom of Stephen was something that was already being celebrated before the establishment of Christmas, just as John the Evangelist, just as the holy innocence. These were memorials that had already been established before there was a universal agreement as celebrating the nativity on the 25th, which is why you have these martyrs all of a sudden right after Christmas.
Speaker 2:And so part of it is like the martyrs come to visit baby Jesus. That's a very romantic, beautiful thought, but yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 1:That makes so much sense and I've always wondered. It's like, yay, baby Jesus, and the next day, yeah, stephen's dead. It's like why the timing seems weird, but now understanding the history lesson behind it that these things already existed, I wonder why they haven't been moved to ordinary time to try and flesh that season out more, because I know it's not ordinary in the sense that it's boring, but you know what I'm saying. Just to allow them to have more time to breathe. Maybe just historical. It would feel weird to move something after something.
Speaker 2:After all these centuries, we're going to move December 25th. Yeah, that's not going to happen. It's just like the Our Father. We still say Halloween be thy name Come on, nobody speaks like that anymore but we still say Halloween be thy name, because saying it in normal English is just weird, because we're just used to, we're slaves to custom.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, today in the church, in the Western church, in the Latin rite, we celebrate the feast of epiphany as a commemoration of the adoration of the Magi. So the the inference here for us is, as we celebrate epiphany, is that God was manifesting himself to the world, to the nations, to us Gentiles, via the persons of the wise men, the Magi, that they represented the Gentiles, so those outside of Israel, and so, therefore, it is a way in which God is manifesting himself to the world through the Magi. So it's an epiphany of God's word to the world, and this word has taken on our humanity. So, then, that the consequence of the feast is, as the Antiphon, the four morning prayer, the feast of epiphany states, and I'll read that in a minute it is that Christ has married himself to humanity in his incarnation and in his church and has given his bride us. The church has given us his bride, the gifts of the sacraments and we, as believers and members of the church and the ones that are involved in this wedding, we're amazed at this wedding that will be definitively revealed when Jesus comes in glory.
Speaker 2:But it's always been something for us to reflect upon the fact that in the Magi, god has already revealed himself to the world. So if you look at it so you see how Jesus came to his own, accepted him not, and so all of a sudden you have in Luke's gospel, you have the Magi, who are wise men, who are foreigners, who are non Gentiles I mean, I'm sorry, non-hebrews. So they're Gentiles and they're the ones that come to accept Jesus before Herod, before Israel. It is they that come to be in awe of this paradox, this mystery that somehow this child that is born in some cave, somewhere with a bunch of animals, right, absolute poverty, that they're willing to consider that this is wisdom and that this is possible, whereas Israel, who had been prepared for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years for the coming of Christ, could not accept him because he did not appear, he didn't come according to their definition of how things should be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and he just the carpenter's son, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even in the gospel there's an insult of Jesus when they say isn't that Mary's son instead of St Joseph's son?
Speaker 1:Oh yes.
Speaker 2:It's an insult, right, like he doesn't have a dad, so he has no father. And so these are. I think these are very interesting mysteries and feasts that we celebrate. If we sit and consider it right, consider what it is that we're celebrating the epiphany, and again, as we look at this, we might go to church and we might celebrate and do all this other stuff and we might do all the right religious stuff, but are we actually aware of his manifestation in the many ways in which he manifests himself to us in our lives, and are we willing to accept that manifestation or not? Are we willing to consider the paradox, consider the great mystery that is being celebrated in the epiphany.
Speaker 2:And it's a beautiful celebration, it is a beautiful liturgical celebration, but again, there's so much being packed into it the whole idea of the nativity, the whole idea of the magi, the whole idea of this wedding, the whole idea of the new wine right, the water being changed into wine, the baptism, the whole light, all these different elements are just amazing. And again, going back to the idea of a feast of idea, as Mormon says, yeah, that's what it is. I think that's where the focus has to be. Our reflection has to be upon. What is the idea that we're celebrating here? The idea of God manifesting himself and the ways he has chosen to manifest himself to us, and am I go ahead.
Speaker 1:Oh, sorry to sorry to interrupt. It's fine, Actually no, please, if you can finish your thought.
Speaker 2:It's gone.
Speaker 1:Okay, as soon as I started I knew you had some little morsel of goodness and I was like now, wow, because mine is so very unthoughtful, I'm sitting here going. Why did they use the word feast? Because that, especially back before it, christianity was was legalized. I'm sure a bunch of people who could be murdered for their faith didn't really want to get together to have a big meal, you know publicly kind of thing. So right, yeah, what. But so why that?
Speaker 2:specific Word, the solar, that the use of a cell celebratory word, I Think probably is connected to the whole idea of the wedding feast and the idea of wedding and the idea that, you know, god, the Father, marries himself to humanity through the Sacred humanity of Jesus Christ, that there is something, it echoes or Insinuates it the wedding feast, right, the wedding feast, the heavenly wedding piece.
Speaker 1:So, and you can't I know you can't, well, can't you? You're not supposed to fast on the Sabbath. Are you supposed to not fast on feast days as well? Correct so as I wonder if maybe that's a, just like you're saying, the cell that celebration calling us into that goodness, that overabundance of generosity from God, that this is something that, if you've been doing without, today is not the day correct.
Speaker 2:It's time to celebrate and I think a lot of times is probably in the older church. There's a much. There was a greater emphasis on penance and, and you know, the wrathful God and all those things, instead of celebrating the, the merciful love and and compassion of God in the Christ, and to really again celebrate our sonship, our daughtership, our filial status, and again, that is pure gift and it's something to celebrate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this whole thought of epiphany to which I'm still giggling about it, because the whole feast of thoughts and ideas and light bulbs and all that but this, this thought of epiphany, is really interestingly timed in my head because and maybe maybe you triggered it in this thought, I don't know, a week or so ago.
Speaker 1:Whenever you're like, have we talked about the epiphany? Because something that I have been in my prayer and in my contemplation I have been, I've realized I'm like 40, something now. Right, and it's taken me this long to be, to take pause and kind of be shocked or scandalized, I guess, by Jesus being God, because it's well, because he's so familiar, right, he is the incarnate human version of God. So there's so much that I can go, okay, I can understand Him because he's a human, he was hungry, he slept a lot on boats and stuff, right, like there's so much that's human about him. But to stop and to try to hyper focus in on His divinity, him being fully God, not partially God, fully God, the uncontainable, immaterial, existential, right, like before, and sometimes like, yeah, that's who that's who he is, and so that is the epiphany, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's this. Invisible made visible, kind of thing, yeah, and it's just really been Present in my thoughts. A lot lately, so I think this is really interestingly timed that you believe in, so I think this is really interestingly timed that you brought this up.
Speaker 2:Well, hopefully others will be able to sit, sit with it. The idea, the whole idea of the incarnation and the celebration that we are find ourselves in at this at. You know this point in in our liturgical year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, how about? How about you wrap us up with the? What did you say? You're gonna read us the the antiphon for yeah.
Speaker 2:The canticle of Zechariah for morning prayer of epiphany yeah, let's. Let's wrap with that. It's a beautiful, beautiful little antiphon. So it says today, the bridegroom claims his bride, the church, since Christ, has washed her sins away in Jordan's waters, the Magi hasten with their gifts to the royal wedding, and the wedding guests rejoice, for Christ has changed water into wine, alleluia.
Speaker 1:And it's beautiful. Yes, all right. Thank you, father. Thank you and everybody who joined in. Hope you learned something. Hope you have a blessed epiphany On January 6th. Maybe that you did. If this comes out after, we'll see we'll see what happens, Okay see y'all next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, god bless.
Speaker 1:Bye, bye.