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JANUARY 17
LOVING HIS EPIPHANY
“As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist,
carry out your ministry fully. As for me, I am already being poured out as
a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good
fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is
reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have
come to love (τοῖς ἠγαπηκόσι) his appearing (τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν αὐτοῦ).” (2
Tim 4: 5-8)
In the final words of this passage, the Apostle reveals the motivation
for his entire journey of “fighting the good fight” and “keeping the
faith.” His entire journey, for which he is about to receive “the crown of
rightousness,” has stemmed from love. St. Paul came to love the Lord’s
“epiphany” or appearance. This, he is saying to Timothy, is the foundation
of “the work of an evangelist,” and everything that comes with it: “always
being sober” and “enduring suffering” and “carrying out ministry.”
My Lord Jesus Christ “appears” or reveals Himself in different, specific
ways and times to each of us, just as He revealed Himself in a unique way
to Saul, when he was in the middle of zealously persecuting Christians.
And the youthful Pharisee, Saul, was immediately struck, even blinded,
with love for the Person of Jesus Christ, Who thus interrupted Saul’s
misguided zeal.
Today let me open up to Christ’s “epiphanies” to me, in the midst of
whatever I am doing. Let me let Him interrupt any misguided ambition
or attitude, be it self-centeredness, anxiety, or misguided desire, and
embrace His love. It calls me to true fulfilment, sometimes through other
people, sometimes through situations, sometimes through my own
emptiness. “Come and abide in us,” I say to His Spirit today, opening up to
the One Who has opened up to me, in His loving epiphany.
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