Dear friends, this is the question that the Church wishes to awaken in the hearts of all men: who is Jesus? This is the spiritual longing that drives the mission of the Church: to make Jesus known, his Gospel, so that every man can discover in his human face the face of God, and be illumined by his mystery of love. Epiphany pre-announces the universal opening of the Church, her call to evangelize all peoples. But Epiphany also tells us in what way the Church carries out this mission: reflecting the light of Christ and proclaiming his Word. Christians are called to imitate the service that the star gave the Magi. We must shine as children of the light, to attract all to the beauty of the Kingdom of god. And to all those who seek truth, we must offer the Word of God, which leads to recognizing in Jesus “the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).
Marvelous stuff. I’m leading a home group meeting tonight, and I think I just might quote these inspiring words without identifying their source and have people guess who said them. Who says that in order to be evangelical you have to be Protestant?
I’d rather listen to the pope preach than to have to listen to ++RW any day. And as for hearing the PB preach, well, we won’t go there. May we all shine more brightly this year, reflecting the wondrous light of Christ to our ever darker and more desperate world!
David Handy+
It’s really interesting because when these various homilies are posted here, they are about half from the Pope and half from Rowan Williams. With about 95% accuracy I can tell which is which from the first line, which I did with this one. B16 is wonderful.
Its great to see a good sermon from BXVI. Its even better to see one of the numerous sermons from Anglican bishops around the world that are just as good. There are over 800 bishops in the Anglican Communion – thankfully, the vast majority of them are thoroughly orthodox.
Thankfully also, T19 posts some of the good homilies by Anglican bishops from time to time. We were blessed with many of these over Christmas. It would be great to see more as the year unfolds.