Friday, January 6, 2012

Epiphany

This being January 6, I found myself reading the definition of the word Epiphany. Well, I know it's the day we celebrate the arrival of the magi to see the baby Jesus. But what does the word mean?

It's not a bolt of lightning that strikes from a cloudless sky. It's more like the unexpected breaking through of the sun on a cloudy day. No one has an epiphany who sits passively at home. You have to have been working, searching, wondering. The seeker finds. The explorer discovers. The moment, the form, the face of the discovery is what is unexpected.

Last night, we had adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Although we've put invitations in local parish bulletins before, almost no one ever comes to this. Usually, it's just the four of us MSBT sitting quietly in the meeting room for an hour. But last night, to our surprise, we had five guests join us.

It struck me that our guests came from three different parishes. I visualized a map, the diverse directions that they had come from, the different roads they had traveled. I wondered what had drawn them each here on this particular night. Why now? Why these particular folks? I can't know the spiritual roads they traveled to arrive at Trinita. But I am sure Father Judge would say it was the Holy Spirit who dragged them here by the hairs of their head!

As I sat there pondering these things, I had an epiphany. Father Judge, when he blessed this mission back in 1923, said he wanted Trinita to become a light shining on the hill. Last night, I realized that our guests were really travelers, and Trinita in this moment was more than a light shining on Town Hill, it was the Star in the East, guiding these pilgrims to their own unique encounter with God-with-us.