Feasts of Theophany

The layout of the feasts of “Theophany” reveals that Jesus is a God Who is immersed in danger, surrounded by a threat from here and there, a God Who is, by and large, on the run and rejected. On the feast of Nativity, no biblical phrase hurts more than that of Luke the Evangelist: “there was no room for them (that is, for Joseph and Mary) in the inn” (2:7). The phrase does not mean that the people it refers to will find a place for themselves elsewhere, but rather that Jesus, and all those who love Him, have no place in the world. You have noticed Herod’s madness, his killing of the children of Bethlehem, and Joseph and Mary’s flight from place to place with the young Child. Also today, on the Feast of the Theophany, our tradition sees the baptism of Jesus as a symbol of His death and resurrection... From the beginning, Jesus seems to be a God Who insists that people be free even from Him. There is no God like Him in the entire world Who leaves people free to accept or reject Him. This is of the eloquence of the Feasts of Theophany, that Jesus came to revive in us that we are children of God (Galatians 4:7).