The Feast of the Epiphany
January 5, 2020
If you want to do yourself a favor, you may just want to this afternoon watch Lucy Worsley’s 12 Days of Tudor Christmas. You have to go to the PBS website if you want to watch it for free. She takes the viewer through the 12 Days of Christmas as they would have been in the times of Henry VIII. At the onset of the program she talks about how different Christmas was 500 years ago. There were no Christmas trees and no Christmas Crackers (as in *bang* not “crunch”), no stockings and no Santa Claus (he had just gone off to the North Pole, Lucy Worsley explains to any children watching).
She also explains that Advent was also very different. Christmas observance did not begin until Christmas Eve. Up to that point people observed strict fasting for all of Advent and it was strictly reinforced by the church – no meat, no dairy for the four weeks leading up to Christmas. And then everything changed on Christmas Eve when everyone would deck out their houses – including their spinning wheel – in bay, rosemary, and holly and ivy and then head to midnight Mass. This would mark the official beginning of the holiday of the 12 Days of Christmas – Christmas ending on the day we celebrate today – Epiphany which is observed on January 6th – or 12th Night which is Epiphany Eve (today).
The problem with modern Christmas observance, if you are at all like me and my family, you are a little burnt out, full up and exhausted from the merriment that begins on Thanksgiving Day. If you looked at our Nativity Set, you would see by the day after Thanksgiving the baby Jesus was already laid in the manger and the Three Kings had already arrived to behold and worship the new born king. Don’t judge.
Contrast this to Tudor time – presents were not exchanged until the 6th day of Christmas, New Year’s Day, and the greatest party of all would have been on Epiphany.
So how do we recapture Epiphany? Our own Kristen Walters is brilliant at helping us do that here at Saint Michael’s – she searches for at least three children to process in at the start of our service (at 10am) and bakes us a cake with a little baby Jesus figurine baked inside of it.
So how can we recapture this 12th Day of Christmas for ourselves? I am going to give you just three simple suggestions – and I will give you the tools to help you at the peace.
I’d like to say I was inspired by our Gospel lesson for today, but the ideas actually came from some words from Keith Lockhart, the conductor of the Boston Pops. At a Christmas Pops Concert this year, Lockhart said that he has come to realize that the message of Christmas is threefold: Tenderness for the past, courage for the present, and hope for the future.
So, the first practice – Tenderness for the Past:
So, as you pack your Christmas decorations– I invite you to spend a moment practicing the “Examen”. It is a five-step daily prayer practice that is part of Ignatian spirituality. But instead of using it for the day, you can think about just the year past. Take 10-15 minutes to go through these five steps (I will give you a copy of these questions at the peace):
1. Become aware of
God’s presence.
2. Review the year with gratitude.
3. Pay attention to your emotions
as you review 2019.
4. Choose one feature of the year
and pray about it – with tenderness and love and maybe even forgiveness.
5. Look toward 2020 and ask God for
what you need as you embark on a new year.
Second – Courage for the present.
A traditional practice for Epiphany is Blessing of the Chalk and Chalking of your front door. I wish I could tell you where this tradition came from and when it started but I have not found the answer to either of those questions. But here’s the tradition: chalk is blessed by the parish priest during the Epiphany service. After church each household takes a piece of chalk home and upon their return home, they say a prayer, and then members of the family write on their front door or above on the lintel: 20 C+M+B 20. “20” for the century, “C“ for Caspar, “M” for Melchior, and “B” for Balthasar, the traditional names for the Magi with crosses between their names for Christ and at the end the year – “20”.
The other significance is that the initials for Caspar, Malchior, and Balthazar also abbreviate the Latin phrase “Christus mansionem benedicat” which means “May Christ Bless this house”.
So in a moment I will bless chalk for you to bring home, should you like to, and a suggested prayer, but feel free to adapt the prayers for whatever you need most from God right now – whether it be courage, or hope, or something other.
And Third and finally – Hope for the Future
There was a family that we used to know in Peterborough NH. And what they would do on Epiphany is that each family member would take a piece of paper and write down what their hope for the New Year would be. It could be anything. It was a little like setting an intention for the New Year. And then they would take that piece of paper and stuff it into their Christmas stocking. And then each year, as they unpacked their stockings, they could read what their hope for the past year was and reflect on it. The story of the Magi – travelling as they did from the Orient to worship the Christ Child is a powerful symbol reminding us that we are always on a journey toward and with Jesus. What is your hope this year for that journey?
Tenderness for the past, hope for the present and hope for the future.
So now I invite the acolytes forward with the baskets of chalk, and the prayers, for the blessing of chalk. During the peace, the acolytes will distribute the chalk and I will invite them to carefully mark the front door of the church.
The blessing of chalk on the Feast of the Epiphany – from the Roman Ritual:
Bless, + O Lord God, this creature, chalk, and let it be a help to all. Grant that those who will use it with faith in your most holy name, and with it inscribe on the doors of their homes the names of your saints, Casper, Melchior, and Baltassar, may through their merits and intercession enjoy health in body and protection of soul; through Christ our Lord.
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