In common use, an ‘epiphany’ is considered a light-bulb moment, the instant the idea comes, the understanding is achieved, or the realization dawns. That has almost nothing to do with the manifestation of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, to all the world, which is what we celebrate liturgically in these days. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed some epiphanies over the past few weeks.
First of all, Christmas-on-a-Monday is even harder than I remembered it. Even with priests helping – the newly-arrived and rapidly coming up to speed Fr. Brillis Mathew, and Fr. Innocent Smith, OP, both contributed mightily to the sacramental worship of our parish. Still, I was thumped by the effort.
And if you doubt me on the seriousness of that, talk to any of our musicians, especially john Henderson. After the last Mass on Christmas day, he bolted for the airport for some time with his family. He had just led seven (7) Masses with music in 28 hours. Ask our singers, who worked in the morning, and the middle of the night, then the morning again.
Or you can find and ask one of the many volunteers who ‘turned’ the church after the end of the last Mass of the Fourth Sunday of Advent, about 12:15 PM on December 24th. Flowers, candles, banners, greenery, statues, and equipment most normal people do not even know exists all had to be wrestled out of or into our church and arranged to maximize Christmas splendor. Most of the work was done by 2:00, but there was some fine-tuning and vacuuming going on even as three o’clock approached. Everyone who arrived for the five o’clock Vigil Mass of Christmas, and every subsequent Mass, was rightly blown away by the beauty and dignity of our festive decorations.
The second epiphany may be that in some cases, harder is better. The pristine beauty and pregnant possibility of Fourth Advent exploded into the fulfillment of Christmas rather like angel choirs appearing in an instant over the flocks we had been watching for a lifetime. The visual transformation was not lost on people who in some cases had been in the church only four hours previously.
The music was amazing, especially the children’s choir at the Solemn Mass of Christmas Day. Father Brian Kane, native son of our parish home on a visit from Nebraska to his mom and dad, heard the choir and orchestra practicing for the Christmas Eve Mass and asked me who these people were. I leaned out of the sacristy and looked around and told him, except for the cellist and maybe one other, they were all of our parish. And the transcendent beauty of the Midnight Mass is enhanced by the darkness, even as it adds another degree of difficulty.
A third, if recurring, epiphany is that none of this has any impact at all on the energy and excitement of the children. That, I am sure, is for the best.
One of the consolations, if you can call it that, I found in this is that the first day of the new year, invariably the octave day of Christmas, falls also on a Monday. There is a very distinctly mega-Monday feel to that morning after all the secular, often forced revelry has dwindled in the last hours of dark and the steel-gray January dawn asserts itself, staying silent rather than reveal anything that is to come. Though not obliged, clearly it is best to go to Mass, where the purpose of time itself and the promise of each day and each new year is laid before us to adore and receive.
Christmas-on-a-Monday has come and gone, not to return until 2028. My thanks to all who labored under its distinctive burdens to make it rich and rewarding for all of us who celebrated it here, parishioners, neighbors, drop-ins, and visitors. Now, to look forward to the next calendar crash: Ash Wednesday vs. Valentine’s Day. God help us.
