What is this fundamental belief? Up to that moment, all the people who set their eyes on Jesus were all Jewish people. With the arrival of the three kings Jesus was being acknowledged and made known for the first time to non Jewish people. The word epiphany which comes from the Greek language “manifestation” or more precisely a “drawing back of the veil”. This feast makes us realize that Jesus Christ has become a human person for every creature under the sun. This feast gives us a very clear understanding that our God has no favourite but that He embraces, cares and loves everybody. Jews and non Jews. In short, today’s feast is a reminder that Jesus Christ is the hope and saviour for the whole world because we are all created in His image and likeness. This is a very bold statement and you and I today are enjoying the fruits and the benefits of this day.
This has many implications. One of the most fundamental consequences is that because all of us are at the centre of God’s heart and attention; we find our purpose of life and sense of meaning only in Him. We may fight against God. We may try to forget Him. We may try to pretend that we have no room for Him. Yet the Spirit of God within us cannot be destroyed. No one can exterminate the Spirit of our God living within us. No one can crush it. It keeps coming to the surface at times in the midst of total darkness and when we feel that there is no way out. Given an opportunity, this God within us rises to the surface with His healing and life-giving touch.
Some examples of history can help us to understand this. I was in Rome studying from 1989 to 1992. The Berlin Wall had just fallen. This marked the end of at least forty years of communist oppression in East Germany. This also affected all the countries in Eastern Europe. For forty years, religion was ridiculed, and demeaned. Religion was excluded from every public place in communist led countries. Churches were destroyed, priests and religious killed, ostracized or imprisoned. People were indoctrinated with the philosophy and the beliefs of the ruling party and the young people were especially targeted to free them from any influence or knowledge about Christianity. However soon after the Berlin Wall fell, many young men and women from places like Hungary, Bulgaria, Belorussia, the Czech and the Slovak republics joined the University where I was studying in order to continue or deepen their religious formation. No one can kill the Spirit of God within us.
The same can be said regarding the history of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Stalin made it a point not only to suppress the Russian Orthodox Church, but had a particular hatred for the Catholic Church because of its allegiance to the Pope in Rome. The Ukrainian Catholic church was totally suppressed and crushed and Catholics were forced to become part of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, with the coming of Gorbachov, when the opportunity for a sense of freedom began to appear, the Ukrainian Catholic Church emerged once again from the ashes and today it has continued with its growth and its way of living. Years of suffering and strangulation did not prevent the flourish of the Ukrainian Catholic Church that we are witnessing today.
Recently the correspondence between a deeply devoted poet Marchesa Maria Curtopassi and Benedetto Croce were published in Italy. The publication of these letters has generated a lot of interest in Italy. Benedetto Croce was one of Italy’s foremost lay thinkers, a philosopher but also was one of the leading anticlerical intellectuals God did not feature at all in his life. During the Second World War, he was practically the only voice of dissent against the dictatorship of Mussolini. Benedetto Croce is considered as a giant in the field of philosophy. Many streets in Italy are named after him. Maria Curtopassi, on the other hand was at the time of this correspondence in her thirties. She was virtually self taught, of an aristocratic descent and she loved writing poetry especially with a religious theme.
The correspondence between these two very different people continued for ten years. As the ten year correspondence developed, the skeptical philosopher gradually came around to a belief in God. He started to say, that “modern thought and civilization are Christian, inspired by the impulse given by Christ and St Paul”. He also admitted, “I have a continuous dialogue with God, more serious and intense than that experienced by many Catholics and priests. In 1942, he went on to publish an essay entitled, “Why we cannot say we are not Christians”.
You and I are called to continue proclaiming this message. We are called to do this by deepening our own relationship with our God to understand how vital and important each one of us is to continue to promote hope to our world. Our call as Catholic people is a call to every person in the world not to give up in achieving peace, justice, basic human rights and dignity and faith in God. Every good and noble action that we do, simple though it might be, has boundless repercussions and effect because after all, it is not just ourselves, who are responsible for these actions but they are also being touched and empowered by our God. Yes we are someone very special because this God who desires to embrace the world is empowering, loving, forgiving and encouraging us to help others realize that their ultimate purpose of life can only be found in a personal and close relation with Him. There is much to celebrate and to be thankful for.
