St Leo the Great; A Sermon for the Epiphany

Extract

Dearly beloved, today in our sacred celebrations we are paying the tribute of honour due to the day when Christ the Saviour of the world first showed himself to the nations of the world. Today there should be born anew in our hearts the same joy that once filled the breasts of the three Wise Men when, having journeyed in accordance with the message of a new star which had become their guide, they worshipped to face the King of heaven and earth, whose promised coming had been the object of their faith. Nor in truth is that day to be considered as belonging entirely to the past, as if the power of the mystery then revealed were something finished and done as if nothing reached down from then to our own times except an event belonging to the sacred history, an event which while it forms part of what we must believe, is yet to be celebrated only in memory. No: God has willed that the Epiphany of Christ be a gift that lasts and bears ever-increasing fruit, so that we can experience in our days what had but its beginning then.