Epiphany of the Lord, 2013
Fr. Anthony Brankin
There is a musical in the theaters now called Les Miserables. It is taken from the fictional story of a French man from nineteenth Century France who stole a loaf of bread to feed his family, and then spends the next twenty years being chased by the police and hunted down by the government for his crime.
Of course, it is fiction, but the author, Victor Hugo, realized that this insane, relentless pursuit of one small man for an even smaller offense—in the name of justice!—was something that easily could happen in a modern liberal atheist state. If there is no God then there is no justice. And there is no mercy. This is the story of an all-powerful state making sure that everyone knows who is supreme. Who is boss.
Bad is good, and good is bad
Do you notice that the hinge of this story is disorder? In other words something is wrong—but what is wrong is not that someone stole a loaf of bread. It is that values like mercy and justice and compassion are changed and turned upside down. What was good—mercy—is now considered bad. What was bad—hunger— is now considered good—or at least nothing to worry about.
And people suffer because of that kind of disorder. That which a normal person hopes for in life—enough food for his family—justice tempered by mercy—humanity ennobled by grace—he does not receive. All he gets is the mindless, loveless jack boot of authority in his face. When a society no longer believes in God, then Disorder and Chaos take over. Things don’t make sense any more and everything—families, lives, rulers and governments spin out of control. And people suffer.
Let me give another story. I asked someone the other day to put a video war game on television for me. And what I saw was something very strange—and maybe frightening. Of course there were the battle characters running here and there and blowing up tanks and enemy soldiers. And the vocabulary and the battle plans were right out of the latest government war manual.
(I had no problem assuming that the research and technology in this video game was funded by the government.
Boys with girls’ faces
It was a sort of low-grade long distance propaganda—manipulation by other means.) But what really surprised me was the faces on the animated characters—that’s what puzzled me. In the style of Japanese Anime—all the male characters had girls’ faces—and all the girls, decked out in armor and grenades, fought like men. Was this intentional? Was some new disorder being promoted? Were values being intentionally turned upside down to make a subtle subliminal point about Motherhood? Fatherhood? Were we being encouraged to think that the strong woman these days is not the one who raises human lives— she is the one in combat boots who takes human lives.
And the manikin males in these videos seem to defend nothing except their own brutality. War is peace the government tells us. What was good is now bad—and what was bad is now good.
Our true ruler
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany—the Feast of the Three Kings. Of course in a Catholic country—Italy, Mexico, Ecuador, Puerto Rico—it is a wonderful day of feasting and giving of gifts—and ultimately celebrating the message of the Three Kings—and the message is that this little Baby lying in a manger is our true ruler or there is no rule. That without Him, everything is chaos and war and disorder—no justice—no mercy and no surcease to our sorrow.
The message of the Epiphany is that everyone—all lands and all peoples—must come to Him and kneel down at his crib and love this God and follow His will in their public and private lives. Otherwise we create disorder and invite disaster. To go against Him—is to go against God’s Word—against God’s Logos—God’s logic—so to speak. And there can be nothing but tragedy when we do that.
People in a Catholic country understand that. Things make sense to them—life makes sense to them. There is an order—God above and we below and everything fits. Husbands and wives and children and even neighbors live in basic accord—not always perfectly—but they know at least that there is a Perfect—and that there is nothing more important than family and God.
Do you think that the story of Les Miserables would have been possible in a Catholic France? Or Catholic Mexico? Or Catholic England? Would there not have been a hundred monasteries each more than happy to provide some poor family with more than a loaf of bread and wine and cheese and lodging as well. “After all,” the monks would have said, “this is no more than what we would do for the Baby Jesus. And are we not all His brothers and sisters.”
Under the orderly care of Jesus
This is order. This is the orderly way of life that comes from God. This is what the Three Kings learned. That the whole universe—revolves around this Jesus. Every facet of the workings of this universe—from the rotation of the planets to the way husbands must treat their wives—from the way that children must be with their families—to the way nations must treat each other—is under the orderly care of this Son of God.
Moreover, the revelation of the Epiphany to the Magi is that Jesus is the Prince of Peace and that peace is more than a lull in the fighting. Peace is more than a five minute timeout to the killing. Peace is what happens when Jesus is our King and we all recognize Him.
Peace is men and women struggling to be pure and to be chaste with each other—and just and merciful with others. Peace is when men and women—proud of the gifts of their gender—try to raise their families in virtue.
Peace is when fathers and mothers know their duty—even if it means dying for those they love.
We are so obviously not in a Catholic country. We are in a country of disorder—the universe of upside down values—where good is bad and bad is good. And they try to trick us at every turn and they tell us that if we just get rid of this Jesus—forget His Church and ignore his teachings—it will be great for us. But they have only brought disaster upon our heads.
From abortion to drone bombing
Divorce—birth control—abortion—public schools—living together, mercy killing, assisted suicide, the marriage of two men—drone bombing and perpetual war. Hallmarks par excellence of modern life.
See the confusion they spread? Men must pretend they are women and mothers must kill their offspring. They cannot even be consistent in their disorder—except maybe the jackboot in the face and the knock on the door in the middle of the night when they come to get us for not going along with it all.
And so how did it come to pass that we are now living the chaos of our own reality show? That we are the characters in our own video games? And that none of it makes any sense? It happened because we began to live Herod’s dream—life without Jesus—life without God—and laws without justice or mercy. We turned values and life upside down.
The message therefore of the Epiphany—of the Three Kings is that the path to peace—the path to virtue—the path to happy family life is the path to the crib of Jesus—where we will find the only King in the world that actually helps this world to make sense and have order and give life—eternal life.