At the very dawn of creation, God, who created the universe, intended and saw its goodness. His creation of every living thing posited a world of majestic beauty. Through his creation of the celestial bodies he inspires awe and wonder in those living creatures as they gaze upon the heavens in all its wonder. His creation of human beings – man and woman – shows his desire to bring us into relationship, not just with one another, but also with him.

From time immemorial, but most particularly beginning with Abraham and the Patriarchs, God clearly addressed his desire to walk with us on the journey of life. He manifested himself to Abraham; allowed Moses the singular honor of encountering him on the mountain. The Lord forged a covenant with his people, a covenant he intended to extend to all of humanity when the time was ready. Speaking through the prophets and the history of the Jewish people, God maintained that covenant even through periods of their rejection of his promises. In the great mystery of his plan for humanity, God chose to become one with his through the Incarnation. We celebrated this Incarnation at Christmas, and now we draw our attention to what this Incarnation means for us: God is made manifest in the humble infant, Jesus. This means that the infinite becomes finite and that God chooses to subject himself to the rule of the nature he created. He does so to affect our salvation and to bring us his healing and his peace.
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The Lord’s glory radiates from all of creation: every object in nature, every creature that lives; in each person we see the image and likeness of God. While the Epiphany marks a specific time in history, the effect of that moment is eternal. We are celebrating not a past event but the on-going reality that God is present with us.

As part of the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola there is a daily examen. As a part of this practice the person at prayer is challenged to reflect on each moment of the day to find where God was in each moment. At first, this exercise seems tedious and perhaps even trite, but as the practice continues, one discovers the consistent hand of God present in one’s life. We can see the big and especially the very small ways in which God is active in each moment of our life. The Epiphany is a reminder to us of that precious gift. God chooses to be present in our lives. He has a plan, not just for the universe, not just for all of humanity, but for each person. This is easier for us, relatively comfortable and living our lives with a sense of abandon to understand. But it should call us to wonder what it means for those who suffer from the most extreme lack of resources in our world. The horrors of war, poverty, natural and human-caused disasters offers a challenge here, just as the problem of evil is always an argument against the existence of God, or at least of a loving God.

We might expect that God, who identifies with the poor, uses the poor to call us to action, and to act on what we know: that God is present with each one of us and we are to be agents of God’s mercy.

Of great concern in the immediate present of our Church is the failure on the part of many, perhaps even most Catholics, to recognize and adore the presence of Jesus Christ as truly and physically present in the Eucharist. In no other way is the presence of Christ more clear standing as an expression of his great love for us. As we ignore God present in our lives, failing to see Jesus present in the Eucharist becomes an almost natural consequence. Jesus offers us himself as the “food for the journey” and a sign of the hope and promise of eternal life.

While this is itself a tremendous, indeed unimaginable gift, it is one that we are generally inclined to overlook. We look for God, not in the ordinariness of our daily lives and experiences, but all too often in the extraordinary. We seek the miracle; the majestic act of God. We have been fed the Hollywood image of God for so long that we are inclined to forget that Jesus Christ was, by all appearances, a normal human baby; everything we can relate to. Instead, as we seek God only in the extraordinary, we miss the myriad of ways he is manifest in our lives each day.

Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.