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| Epiphany Cathedral, Venice, Florida |
The feast of the Epiphany
is an interesting one. In the Eastern Catholic Church, it is
the main feast of Christmas. Here we celebrate it as the feast
of Christ being recognised by the world. The three wise men, or
astrologers, were led to this place where Christ was. They are
supposed to have come from different countries. They represent
all the peoples of the world since they were not Jewish. It is
a way of saying that Jesus’ coming is for all peoples of all
religions and race. In the end all people will recognise that
Jesus is the Son of God.
The three gifts they bring
are symbolic. Gold is the symbol of a king. Jesus is a
king, the King of the whole universe. The use of frankincense
is a sign of recognising a God. Jesus is Son of God, the second
person of the God-head or Trinity. Myrrh is a perfume that
represents the suffering he will go through to win eternal life for
the human race. The point is that all peoples of all religions
will recognise that Jesus is God and that we only have eternal life
through him.
It might seem a bit
arrogant of us Christians to say that all people will recognise that
Jesus is the Son of God. That seems to imply that we are right
and that everyone else is wrong, but maybe that is the wrong way to
look at it. People of different religions have very different
understandings of God and God speaks to all people through the
different religions. Even for those who never come to know Jesus in
this lifetime, they still have eternal life won for them by the death
and resurrection of Christ and eternal life is still offered to them,
just as it is to us. When they die they will see this at
once. There can only be one God and this God has created us for
happiness.
Although we lost the
possibility of eternal life with God through what we call Original
Sin (and interestingly most religions have a similar understanding of
Original Sin although it is called by different names) God regained
the possibility of eternal life for us through the death and
resurrection of Jesus. But because God totally respects
the freedom He has given us, He does not force this on us but
simply offers it to us. We must accept this gift individually,
and we do this through our faith. All people are offered this
possibility regardless of whether they come to know of God in this
life or not. But it is not as if there is a kind of neutral
ground for those who do not believe. We accept life with God
when we die, which will be our total fulfilment, or we lose it
forever, and that is the choice we must make.
We may have the impression
that Jesus died for Christians only and that you have to be a
Christian to go to heaven. This would be to see it backwards.
Depending on how we live our life and the choices we make, we accept
or reject God. That is where our conscience is so important,
because even if we never hear of God during our life, God speaks to
us through our conscience, giving us a basic understanding of what is
right and wrong. Our faith and the teachings of Jesus through
the Church give us a better understanding of what is right or wrong.
All of the decisions that we make throughout our life are bringing us
closer to, or driving us farther away from God.
Christians are the people
who recognise that Jesus is the Son of God and has done all these
things for us. We consider ourselves blessed that God has made
himself known to us in this way and as Catholics we consider
ourselves especially blessed to recognise the gift of the Eucharist,
the priesthood, confession, etc, because these are God’s gifts to
us. However, that doesn’t mean that we have a better chance
of going to heaven than anyone else. That depends completely on
how we live our life. When we die we will realise that all this
is really true and when other people of different religions die, they
will also recognise that Jesus Christ is Lord. That doesn’t
mean that they are all wrong now; rather that they have a different
understanding of God. What is important for them is to live
their faith as well as they can just as it is for us. If they
do this, God will also draw them closer and closer to himself and
bring them to holiness, just as He will with us if we remain open.
Every knee shall bow
in heaven, on earth and under the earth
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11)
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