In the beginning of the year, we celebrate the feast of Epiphany. The word itself means manifestation, a showing up, a coming to the surface of what was mostly hidden inside. But that’s an abstract way to describe it. Just recently I saw something that brought its meaning home in a more appealing way.

It was a family photograph, a lap-top picture of three generations of a family I know that was taken the day after Christmas, everyone dressed in their Sunday best. It wasn’t the clothes that caught me, but rather the looks on their beaming faces. Each showed joy and it shone not just through their smiles, but through their whole bearing as they stood together, the happiness coming through everybody’s eyes.

In the terms of Epiphany, it was a manifestation of what was happening inside them. It was a coming to the surface of an interior attitude that had been there all along, a “showing forth” of mutual familial love.

And wasn’t something of this disclosure evident in the various incidents surrounding the birth of the Christ Child? The Blessed Mother, expecting a child, Elizabeth, feeling the baby stirring within her. And the stars in the sky radiating a certain direction to these three travelling wise men, a bearing not all that clear but guiding, nonetheless.

This notion, epiphany, a showing of something of the Holy coming up from within, speaks to each of us about our different epiphanies of the holy. The times when we saw goodness appearing in the actions of some person — such as that woman who does something completely selfless to help another, or that man, who, under pressure, bravely speaks the truth.  Or our own selves, when walking along a seashore on a perfect summer day, sensing a mostly unnoticed beauty of nature flaring out – and a “thank you God” rising within us.  Or, perhaps most striking, the day you realized someone loves you.

All these are epiphanies, situations in life when the mostly hidden goodness of God breaks through in some way or other. Events that disclose something under cover suddenly giving off a glimpse of the Holy – like the joy and happiness and trust that shone out on the faces of that family.

The feast of Epiphany is a feast of “showing forth,” a celebration of God’s presence as it’s being revealed amidst life. It’s a celebration of noticing the mostly overlooked nearness of God’s Holy Spirit in the events all around us.

Epiphany challenges us to open our eyes and hearts to the Goodness of God as it shines out in so many places over the years.

In the rule he wrote for his priests and brothers, Vincent touches on the dawning of divine love in human relationships.

Can someone who has this esteem and affection for the neighbor speak ill of him? … Having these sentiments in his heart, can he see his brother and friend without showing his love for him? From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks and, ordinarily, exterior actions give witness to what is within the person; those who have true charity interiorly will manifest it exteriorly.

(Volume: 12 | Page#: 217) Charity (Common Rules, Chap. II, Art. 12), 30 May, 1659 added on 6/28/2011