Don’t Forget to Chalk Your Door for Epiphany

Michie · Jan 8, 2025

Some chalk writing on our lintels will help us understand what this holy season is about.

The Epiphany is the second major festival of the larger Christmas season, and in the Latin Church, its observation gives principal attention to the visitation of the magi. In fact, some missals subtitle it “The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.” But long tradition also associates the Epiphany with two other events: the baptism of the Lord and the miracle of water turned to wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. It used to be that we would hear this every year, but the lectionary-revisers in the 1970s decided we should hear about the wedding at Cana only once every three years (to which I say, Boo, everybody likes that story—but praise God I’m not in charge of making lectionaries).

The combination of these three mysteries is, in any case, beautiful. You can see right away how they connect with one another, how they are all “epiphanies” in some way. To the magi, Christ is revealed as Lord not just of Israel, but of all the nations—what old Simeon, in the Temple, had already proclaimed in his Nunc dimittis—“to be a light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.” Surely, as Mary “ponders all these things in her heart,” this particular statement would have come to mind as the wise men arrived. At the baptism, which comes at the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry, the epiphany is nothing less than the revelation of Christ’s relationship with the Father and the Spirit. It is also, in the most literal way, the moment he comes on the scene and becomes a figure of interest to the public. Not too long thereafter, the wedding at Cana is a revelation not just of his power over created things, but of his love forcreated things—a man who turns water into wine at a wedding party, at the request of his mother, is not some otherworldly distant figure, but someone who can be known.

Continued below.