In Ratatouille, Remy the gastronomic rodent describes his brother Emile as someone who is easily impressed. We too are like that because we are taken up by the bright lights of Christmas. But in reality, Epiphany is the reason for us to celebrate Christmas.Year A is Matthew’s Gospel. Whatever historical foundation we want to establish for the wise men—were there three of them, were they actually kings, etc—we should not overlook their symbolic value for Matthew’s Gospel. More than any other evangelist, Matthew sees in Jesus Christ the fulfilment of the hopes of ancient Israel. For Matthew there is continuity between Judaism and Christianity. Therefore, when he tells the story of Jesus, he does so with a rear-view mirror glance at the history of Israel. For example, the sermon that Jesus gives is set on a mountain. This is because Jesus is now the new Moses for Moses had brought divine revelation from Mount Sinai. The wise men's coming today parallels Solomon whose wisdom was sought by a visitor from the East—the Queen of Sheba. She marvelled at the wisdom of Solomon. (1 Kgs10:1-13). Now the wise men are in search of the true wisdom.
The Second Reading gives us a theological or wider vision of the feast whereby God invites both Jews and Gentiles to share on an equal footing, the benefits of salvation brought by Christ. Epiphany brings out the true significance of Christmas because it reveals to us the universal significance of Jesus Christ. This is possible because of the continuity in the plan of God’s salvation for the world. There is no salvation just for the Jews alone. Therefore, it makes sense then to speak of the continuity between Judaism and Christianity.
Who is Jesus Christ for the world? How are we to come before him? Today’s feast is meant to open our minds to the possibility of conversion to Christ, to his truth, to his wisdom and his salvation.
This is where we meet closed minds. People like to be known as “open-minded”. If I called you narrow-minded, I don’t think you like that because we are especially sensitive to the charges of prejudice, bigotry or intolerance. But, this seeming “openness” may actually represent a kind of conformism which is actually a closing of the mind. When we are afraid to think the deeper questions, then we have actually closed our minds. At this point in human history when there is a breakdown of meta-narratives, that is, a breakdown in the ability to have an overarching story that binds all the experiences, when we no longer are able to tell the same story, we react by closing our minds. For example, in a dialogue of life, when a person says, “what is true for you is true for you and what is true for me is true for me”, that means that we have already closed our minds or we admit that we are incapable of truth or incapable of approximating the truth.
You’d be surprised where closed minds can come from. There are those who have accepted Christ as Saviour. The acceptance of Christ is not really openness. The acceptance of Christ to the exclusion of others is really a kind of “closing of the mind” as there is no possibility of accepting other people who do not share our convictions. A closed mind will look at them and think: We have the truth and you have falsehood. The current debate about what to call God in another language is a clear example of how a closed mind works. Such a closed mind sees a great divide between them and us. “Ours is the true God and we alone can call God by this name. We are saved. Yours is not the true God which is why we forbid you to call God by that name. You are not saved”. But, let’s not point our fingers at other people. Let’s look at how closed a Catholic mind can be. For example, in marriage too, there are families who might exert the pressure to either the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law to convert to become Catholics. And there are many who enter into marriage a Catholic only in name but will never live a Catholic life. It is sad that people embrace a religion such as Catholicism out of convenience. But that’s not because of them but because of our stance towards those who are not Catholics. We have acted with a closed mind.
On the other side of the spectrum, there are some who pride themselves to be open-minded. For some people, everything is the same. That too is a form of closed mind. Everything cannot be the same for if it were, then why aren’t you everything? It betrays a laziness of one’s capacity to choose or one’s capacity of conviction—a poor exercise of the faculty of choosing and be convicted. For example, people who believe that every religion is the same, ultimately believes in no religion, set themselves up as the standard and in the end reduced themselves to an idol of no consequence. Ask a person who is a friend of everybody. That person will probably die of loneliness. "Every religion is the same" is a form of relativism because it leads not to conviction but rather dissolution of life, of character and morality.
What we need is a rigorous openness to Christ and the true meaning of his coming. In the first example of a closed mind, we are not supposed to beat people into submission because force in conversion can only result in superficiality. On the other hand, we should not confuse what we believe in to be with everything else. Not all religions are the same. We are duty-bound to respect them but we are not bound to accept their truth claim.
This is where we hear the common saying that religion is one of the greatest sources of conflict in the world. But true religion does not lead to conflict. Instead true religion leads to conversion.
Therefore, given the scenario, what is important is for us to hold the tension of being “exclusive”, on the one hand, in which people who do not think like us are excluded and “inclusive”, on the other hand, in which people try to dissolve differences because they are unable to deal with them. When people can’t deal with differences, they either divide the world into a “we vs. they” reality OR they dissolve the differences by making “everything the same”. Within this tension we enter Epiphany in which Christ is revealed to be the Saviour of the world. This is the meaning of Epiphany. The only credibility we have for proclaiming Christ to be the Saviour is through our lives. Now, He is revealed in and through our lives. How can we live our lives so that people may recognise the Christ in us? Epiphany is thus a reminder that every deed of ours must match the name Christian. For example, if your car has a sticker that says, “Jesus is the answer”, be careful how you drive because for many of us, our actions are not extraordinary enough to show the world that Jesus Christ is Lord. Go to the supermarket and see how our behaviour is no different from others.
Today is a good day because we are commissioning our catechist. The word catechesis is rooted in the Greek "Katekhein", meaning to resound or echo faithfully the teaching of the Church in Scripture and Tradition. But, I should add that catechesis is also an echoing of the actions of Christ. Let our actions be the most credible witness to the presence of Christ the Saviour of the world.
