New Thing- Chalking Our Door, Searching for Christ, Listening to Poetry, and Burning Christmas Trees..for Jesus!
Inspiration: The Feast of the Epiphany, Bishop Paul, St. David's, Anne Kitch, Matt
Time: All Day
Bottom Line: The light of Christ has shone brightly in our life today!
Reflection: Today was the Feast of the Epiphany! You may remember that we have some fun ways of cerebrating this Feast in our family (as see in this post, this post, and this post). Well, today was another spectacular day of witnessing Christ's Light in being revealed to the world.
Here is the description of this Holy Day from my previous posts by James Kiefer:
"Epiphany"
is a word of Greek origin, related to such English words as
"theophany," "phenotype," and "phenomenon." It means an appearance, a
displaying, a showing forth, a making clear or public or obvious. On
this day, Christians have traditionally celebrated the making known of
Jesus Christ to the world.Several events have been thought of as special
instances of the making known of Our Lord, such as: His birth; the
coming of the Magi; His Baptism; His first miracle at Cana. Current
majority usage, at least in the West, celebrates His birth on 25
December, the coming of the Magi on 6 January, and His Baptism on the
next Sunday. On the following Sundays up to the beginning of Lent, we
remember Our Lord's public preaching of the kingdom, particularly the
earlier stages of that preaching when opposition had not yet
crystallized. On the Last Sunday after Epiphany (the Sunday before
Lent), we commemorate the Transfiguration, the climax of this first
phase of our Lord's public ministry. Today, then, we commemorate the
visit of the Magi, a token of the day when all the peoples of the earth
will acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, God, and Savior. The visit of the
Magi is recorded in the second chapter of Matthew.
To begin with, we chalked the doors both at church and at home. Epiphany is a traditional time for house blessings. Normally, it is a blessing that is done as an annual renewal for dwellings or places of worship and an inscription is written in chalk over the main door. (You can find the liturgy that we used at my previous blog post linked above.) Along with our blessing you may remember our little wise-men tradition (with thanks to Anne Kitch and family) that involves dressing up as the wise men (in crazy costumes) and going in search of the Christ Child by following a set of clues. We hid all of the pieces of D.'s plush Nativity in different places of the house and then the three of us got dressed up to go on the hunt after I read the story. Jesus was found on the cross in our upstairs prayer-room. We all said prayers together to thank God for coming into our midst--even in the form of a young child found in a manger or a crazy little family.
 |
| The Wise Men |
 |
| Reading the blessing and holding the chalk at the ready. |
 |
| "Dear God...what have they they wrought?!" |
 |
| Last tree- look at the flames behind us! |
 |
| Last tree thrown on by Matt and Hillary |
Finally, the newest tradition came to the clergy as a suggestion from Bishop Paul. It was to listen to T.S. Eliot reading his poem "The Journey of the Magi". It was beautiful and as the Bishop writes, "the last stanza takes us from the tinsel to the coming journey, as we now move from tree to cross." Here it is for you to enjoy:
No comments:
Post a Comment