Dear Friends,
This Sunday we celebrate the feast of Epiphany. Epiphany is a vital moment in the unfolding Christmas story, not an afterthought or an ending. For many people, Christmas seems to be over as soon as the gifts are opened and the trees and lights come down. Life returns to “normal.” But that rush to move on does a grave injustice to the story of Christmas. The mystery of God-with-us does not fade after December 25—it deepens. As the days pass, the meaning grows richer. At Epiphany, the child born quietly in Bethlehem is revealed to the wider world—to the Gentiles, to seekers, to those unsure whether God is truly present at all. In the Magi, God is made known to the agnostic world, the searching world, the world beyond familiar borders.
The journey of the Magi, guided by a mysterious star, echoes an older and deeper story—the journey of the Israelites in the desert. After the Exodus from Egypt, God did not hand them a map. Instead, God gave them a Presence: a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. The cloud and the fire did not explain everything; they did not remove danger or confusion. But they did one essential thing—they led the people to where God was. As long as Israel followed the cloud and the fire, they were moving toward freedom, promise, and life. So, it is with the Magi. They follow a star. As one poet beautifully puts it, “three members of an obscure Persian sect walked haphazard by starlight, straight into the kingdom of heaven.” They arrive not at a palace, but at a child. And there, they discover that the destination of every Epiphany gently but firmly reminds us of a deeper truth: the human heart is still a pilgrim heart. As Saint Augustine confessed with disarming honesty, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” No amount of success, distraction, or self-invention can silence that restlessness. Beneath our certainties and our noise lies a longing—for truth that does not shift, for peace that does not fade, for a home that does not disappoint.
