This Sunday we celebrate the Epiphany of our Lord, the "mystery of the manifestation of Our Lord, Jesus Christ to all peoples" as Pope Benedict XVI called it, when the Magi visited the Christ Child. Saint Stanislaus Papczynski, the founder of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, wrote a reflection for the Feast of the Epiphany to his fellow religious: "The star which they had seen in the East, went before them" Mt 2:9 Behold, He - who by His light had drawn the Magi to himself - shines in you, your soul, that it may also draw you to Him. Therefore, after the severe night of so many sins and failings, "Arise", and "be enlightened, O Jerusalem, because your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you" (Is 60:1). As for you, do not indulge in such sleeping after the Son, God, has risen in you, but awakened, be swiftly enlightened. Alas, how long will you be fond of the night? How long will you abide in the darkness! The Pharaoh beseeched Moses, that he would remove the three-day darkness from his kingdom [see Ex 10: 21-24). And you, after the heavenly light has entered your heart, will you not put away sleep? "Arise, be enlightened". "They went back another way to their country" Mt 2:12 Consider that God foresaw the violent death that the most ferocious Herod was preparing for the Magi, visitors of the Infant Christ. And so the Magi, warned by an angel, did not go back to the tyrant, but returned to their kingdoms by a different way. The same God foresaw your ruin, if - allured by your senses - you were to return again to your former imperfections. Wherefore, enclosed in you, He himself warns you not to return by the same way. Your country is paradise, or Heaven: where one arrives by no other way than by the way of the cross. Having, therefore, abandoned the way of sensuality, proceed by the thorny way of the cross: because by this way one goes to Heaven. Excerpt from The Epiphany of Our Lord; to read article in full please go to: https://www.thedivinemercy.org/articles/epiphany-our-lord
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