(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Mass-Blog-for-the-Epiphany-of-the-Lord-2025.mp3)
How’s this for an epiphany:
“I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.”
Those are the words of Black Elk, a holy man of the Lakota tribe of Native Americans, who also became a Catholic and may someday be named among the Church’s great saints. Black Elk’s Catholic writings are detailed in The Sacred Pipe, a book that has been compared to the insights of Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica.
Black Elk states his inspiration for The Sacred Pipe right up front: “God sent to men His son [to bring peace]. . . . This I understand and know that it is true.”
He tells us why we should all know the “greatness and truth” of Lakota tradition: “to help in bringing peace upon the earth, not only among men, but within men and between the whole of creation.”
The prophet Isaiah sounds like this Native American Holy Man by the way he talks about the uniting light emanating from Jerusalem in Sunday’s first reading:
“Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you … and over you appears his glory. Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance.” (Isaiah 60:1-6)
In Sunday’s second reading, Paul shares with the Ephesians the same kind of universal unity …
“…that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” (Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6)
In other words, no more tribalism! We’re all called to the unity of one eternal spirit. The gospel reading for the epiphany tells of Holy men who departed from their own eastern cultures to find the unifying wisdom for which humanity has always hungered but was somehow unable to find within themselves—until it came from above them.
“And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage.” (Matthew 2:1-12)
What they saw was a holy family about to erase the earth’s margins. This family had already been refused shelter by people who had shelter to offer, and refused peace by people in power who feared the peace this family promised the world. The epiphany of this peace draws those who seek it. It kindles the kind of courage exhibited by the first Native American saint who inspired Black Elk’s embrace of Christianity.
Kateri Tekakwitha was a 17-Century Algonquin-Mohawk and the first Native American saint. Like the magi from the old world’s Eastern hemisphere, she represents a calling heard among tribes in the new world’s Western hemisphere—to become one with a power out of this world. By doing so, St. Kateri experienced the sacrifice of the savior Isaiah foresaw—“despised and rejected,” a person of sorrows and “acquainted with grief.” (Isa. 53:3).
Father Steve Grunow, CEO of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, explains the beauty and significance of this sacrifice through the example of St. Augustine, who modeled the trading of this world’s cheap grace for the extravagant grace of God’s wisdom:
“Of far more value is to suffer for Christ, to pray for those who persecute us, and to take our place, in imitation of Christ, among the least who inhabit the marginal places of the world.”
Let’s share in the epiphanies of the ancient magi of the Eastern Hemisphere and the Native Americans of the Western Hemisphere so we may rescue humanity from its hemispheric divisions. A Holy Family lives beyond earth’s margins.
–Tom Andel
The Holy Family lives on forever and their explicit purpose is to lead by example, along with brining Christ into the world as was ordained since the beginning of time.
The world today is in such need of families, holy families that help define and create the culture that we live in. Families offer stability and harmony that can not be duplicated or assimilated. There is no substitute for how God meant it to be. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are the ultra role model family for us all to strive to be like. We thank them for their witness and example. We thank them for our faith and our lives.
Thank you!
Agreed, Thomas. The call to holiness is an eternal beacon as bright as the star of Bethlehem. It still shines on our world, offering an epiphany for each new generation. An epiphany is a manifestation of the Divine. There’s no stronger manifestation of divinity than the love that creates a family. It’s the life force of every culture.