Gospel Reflection for January 5, 2019, Feast of Epiphany

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 60.1-6; Ephesians 3.2-3, 5-6; Matthew 2.1-12

After Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem of Judea, magi from the east arrived on day in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage” (Matthew 2.1-2).

The magi are not Jews; they are Gentiles, the term for all the other nations. They come by following a star; they study and seek the divine in the visible, natural world. This is the world we experience. This is the world we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. This is the world that engages our affections and nightly turns our hearts toward morning and waking anew. We live its rhythms and by its lights.

Creation, not the written book of Genesis, is the first source of revelation. Creation manifests God’s living-giving and sustaining presence. Today we follow the stars with the successors to the Hubble telescope, which has confirmed Einstein’s theory that we live in an expanding cosmos.

We are seekers like the magi. Physics has taken us within the atom. Biology has decoded the human gnome and learned how molecules splice and proteins fold. In our world God acts not only in the beginning but in all 13.7 billion years of our unfolding. The God of our cosmic story is not fixed and static but dynamic and life-giving.

God comes to us from the future as we experience the lure within us to become all we can be, a drive we share with all beings. In our relationships with each other and our partnerships with Earth, evolution continues. In Jesus, God shows us all we can become.

When has the mystery in which we live astounded you?

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