The Feast of the Epiphany

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Today we celebrate the Feast of Epiphany

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, wise men came to Jerusalem, asking “Where is the infant king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose and have come to do him homage.” When King Herod heard this he was troubled, and so was the whole of Jerusalem. Having listened to what the king had to say, they set out. And there in front of them was the star they had seen rising; it went forward and halted over the place where the child was. The sight of the star filled them with delight and going into the house they saw the child with his mother Mary and falling to their knees they did him homage. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. But they were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod and returned to their own country by a different way.

The Wise Men show forth two great virtues in their pursuit of the Christ child: courage and magnanimity. Courage in willingness to sacrifice what is lesser for the sake of what is greater. They left behind the comfort and safety of their homeland to seek Christ and when they found him, they abandoned their treasures to him.

And the Wisemen were magnanimous. Magnanimity is to desire and strive after the greatness for which God created you.

These pre-Christians are forever a great challenge to us. God made you and I for greatness: to share in his divine life, to become saints. Do you desire and actually strive with all your life to become a saint. Are you willing to sacrifice all that is less than this to become one? 

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Notice that upon hearing Christ was born, Herod was troubled and with him, all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

And even though the scholars told them Christ would be born in Bethlehem, neither Herod nor even one person from Jerusalem went in search of him. They suffered from the deadly sin of sloth. Sloth is not laziness. Sloth is a sorrow or boredom with the spiritual life. It results in a spiritual apathy or complacency or even worse with an aversion for God and the spiritual life.

Sloth is a kind of resentment. It’s resenting God for giving us such a noble calling – to share in his divine life and become a saint. It’s saying to God, “Why couldn’t you have just left me alone to enjoy myself? Why couldn’t you just leave me to a mediocre waste of a human life?”

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Sloth tempts us to escape the high calling to become a saint through busyness and entertainment

The first way we try to escape the call to become a saint is being “busy” all the time. Imagine a kid who was supposed to write an essay during class, and he took out a pencil and a piece of paper and started writing furiously. You might think, from looking at a distance, that he was working hard. But then imagine the class ended and the only thing on his paper was doodles. The teacher would say, “Why were you so lazy?” And the kid might say, “But look at how much I wrote!” And the teacher would say, “But that wasn’t the assignment!”

The assignment is becoming a saint. If you go to God, it’s not going to work to say, “Look at all the stuff I did! I was busy all the time!” That’s more likely to be a sign of sloth – of ignoring the spiritual good that’s supposed to come first. The person lying on the couch binge watching Netflix may be a more popular image of sloth. But the workaholic, all those over-scheduled and over committed, those who are busy all the time and in the process neglects God and family, are the more typical manifestation of sloth in our culture.

Martha’s sin was a sin of busy sloth – and Jesus reprimanded her by saying, “Martha, Martha, you are busy and anxious about many things. Only one thing is necessary.”

That thing is intimacy with God. That one thing is love and holiness. That’s the assignment

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The second way we attempt to escape our high calling is through constant distraction

Sloth is an attachment to distraction through entertainment.

Have any of your kids ever had a major assignment do, and instead of just consistently working at it, they try to just forget about the assignment altogether?

Well, that’s what people with sloth do. They know the assignment is a deep friendship with Jesus and to become saints, but instead of working on that, they try to forget the assignment altogether.

Why do you think we waste so much time on pointless entertainment: news, shows, sports, social media…? Because we are trying to forget our call to greatness: Either because we think it’s not possible, or that it will take too much effort, or mostly because we know deep down, we will have to give up our vices and sins we are so attached to.

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These scene of the Ephiphany ends with the Wise Men being warned in a dream so they returned home by a different way.

God created you to be a saint and you will be satisfied with nothing less. But you may need to do something different in your life, you may need to return home by a different way.

If sloth is manifested by constant busyness and over-commitment, then the first thing we need to do is take an honest look at what fills our days and nights and weekends. Is all this stuff necessary. Does it leave me and my spouse and kids too little time to really pursue a deep friendship with Jesus in prayer, and sacraments and learning our faith?

And if sloth is manifested by endless entertainment, then we need to cut down on the time we spend in front of screens with news, sports, politics, social media, on and on and on…

See, what were really talking about is feeding your soul with the truth, beauty and goodness it longs for and to stop feeding it out of the dumpster.

In fact, if we just cut down on those things, we will probably have all kinds of time for a more consistent prayer life, more time to learn our faith and for spiritual reading and good conversations with friends and walks outside and all kinds of things that are true and good and beautiful.