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Feast of Epiphany
It's interesting to note that while most of Western Europe and the English-speaking world celebrate Christmas as the "gif giving" Holiday, our Spanish, Latn American and Carribean brothers and sisters see Christmas as solely a religious holiday, as well as a day of prayer, and focus on gif giving for the Feast of the Epiphany. And while Christmas won't be replaced by the Epiphany in our culture any tme soon, it does behoove us to delve deeper into the spiritual reason why Epiphany is celebrated in the way that it is. The Anglifed word, "epiphany" comes from the Greek επιφαινίνη meaning "reveal". Not only does it point to the liturgical celebraton that most of the world celebrates on January 6th, "epiphany" has an added meaning of the revelaton of the divine. In this case, it is the revelaton of the Christ child to the Magi, non-Jews also known as Gentles. So the Epiphany speaks to us of the fundamental truth that Christ came for the Jews, the Chosen People of God AND non-Jews alike. That all of us can be, and are, a part of the Lord's plan of salvaton. The gifs of the Magi, in partcular, speak of Christ's saving acton by their gifs of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Each of the gifs of the Magi speak to the threefold role that Jesus shares with us on the day of our Baptsm: priest (frankincense), prophet (myrrh) and king (gold). So in the Epiphany the Church recognizes that not only is Christ the gif, but that we share in that gif and, in response to His unbelievable generosity and love, are refectons of that gif as we live out our lives of faith. So what gif have we received from God this Christmas season? What is our partcular gif back to Him? What gifs do we give to one another? That is what we as a Church focus on, not just during the eight days of the Octave of Christmas, but also on the Feast of the Epiphany.
