Abbot Raymond. On Saturday set out for the flight to
EPIPHANY 2009
Raymond left the Homily for the Solemnity of Epiphany and was delivered in the Commuity, Nunraw, this morning.
“With God, nothing shall be impossible”.
“With God, nothing shall be impossible”. So we hear the angel Gabriel assure Mary at the annunciation. Our God is great and Almighty, but how shall we measure the greatness of his works? If we measure them by their size we have the Universe; the Cosmos; all things Created, to consider. If we measure them by their littleness we have the world of the microscope to search into; an apparent infinity of littleness as vast as the greatness of outer space. If we measure them by another standard we learn that the “Mercies of God are above all his works”. If we measure them by their singularity or uniqueness we have the works of the Incarnation and the Eucharist.
But if we may dare to judge the greatness of the works of the Lord by the human standard of difficulty of accomp-lishement we might perhaps see the Epiphany as being at the top of the list. But how can it be difficult for God to accomplish anything? After all, he need only “speak and it comes to be”. However, revelation itself does give us the picture of God finding things “difficult”, as it were, when he has to deal with the free will of men.
God finds himself having to push and to pull; to persuade and to threaten, in order to get his way with us. God has to “wrestle” with us all, just as he had to wrestle with Jacob. By this standard then, the incarnation was the pure and simple will of God encountering the pure and simple will of the Virgin. No struggle, no difficulty, so simple and easy, for all its greatness. But when it comes to his Epiphany, to his unveiling to the rest of mankind, just who and what he was, then indeed there began a struggle, a titanic struggle, not only with the forces of darkness but also with every individual soul that is born. This is the great groaning of revelation that is still ongoing after two thousand years of Christian history. This is the great wrestling with the moral blindness and stubborn free will of mankind that will continue to the end of time.
By this standard then, perhaps the Epiphany is the greatest of God’s works and has yet to find its full accomplishment.
