“Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”
—Isaiah 60:1.
ed seward
Today, January 6th, we are celebrating the Feast Day of Epiphany, the manifestation of the light of Christ to the Gentiles. That’s most of us. I first met Epiphany when I was eleven or maybe twelve years old. A boyfriend and his parents took me to visit “her” on the icy winter night of January 6 in the mid-1950s. I sat in the candlelight glow of the small Episcopal church in my hometown in tidewater Virginia, and heard her ancient liturgy and her haunting mystic melodies. As we walked out of the small-town white wooden church into the bitter cold January night carrying our small candles, the first winter’s snow also came down to celebrate her. Epiphany led me to an experience I wanted to relive again and again.
Epiphany revealed to me a living presence, a God greater than myself—who was also greater than time, immanent and transcendent.
But as often happens with such early experiences, I soon became immersed in growing up and going to school and succeeding in life—and I let her slip away. I did not again seek her out for many years—in fact, until I was a junior in medical school. I was studying and working at a frantic pace. My marriage had recently failed. I felt alone, exhausted, and damaged. I was open to Epiphany’s call. I contacted the Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis, William Dimmick, and he led me by the hand back to her feast day, this time in St. Mary’s Cathedral.
On that Sunday closest to January 6, the darkened stone church was packed with young people. On this occasion I heard haunting, ancient chant as well as contemporary music. The priest of the Greek Orthodox Church read the Gospel in Greek. At this service three ornately adorned Wise Men sang as they slowly and majestically processed down the long center aisle of the nave and laid their gifts on the memorial altar. The service ended as we sang hymns, and the cathedral came ablaze as our candles were lighted. We continued to sing with the Wise Men as we moved now in the opposite direction, recessing from the altar and venturing into the dark night—taking our new light out into the world beyond the cathedral.
Since that January 6th I have stayed with Epiphany, and she has been my companion now for fifty years. Each year we continue to celebrate her gifts for the twelve days following the feast of Christmas Day. She is a reminder of God’s coming, God’s presence revealed to the entire world, not just to a chosen few. We are strengthened by worshiping, in new and old ways, the manifestation of the living, immanent, incarnate God. And as we are strengthened and enlightened by her, we are called to take her light, love, and enlightenment out—out into a world that is often cold and exhausted, dark and damaged and lonely.
Epiphany yearly also brings us one more revelation. Out in the world, we see her path in the dark night more clearly because of her great light from so many shining candles beyond our own.
May this new year be full of many more epiphanies for all of us and for those we love.
joanna . joannaseibert.com