Now I want to use this as an example of an experience of God. I’m sure we’ve all had many of them. Perhaps in prayer, perhaps at Mass or in reading the Scriptures, perhaps in nature, perhaps in childbirth, perhaps in a loving and kind person, perhaps even in suffering. These experiences are moments to treasure. They could be called “epiphanies” for us for the word “epiphany” means God manifesting himself to us. Like the ocean God is vast, eternal, all powerful, all wise, all loving, greater than the universe. Those little epiphanies any of us may have had are just one very tiny experience of the infinite God.

Today we hear about the epiphany of three magi. This word magi comes from the original Greek text which calls them “magoi.” Most likely they were from Persia or Babylon, and were priests of the Zoroastrian religion, known for their wisdom and their ability to interpret dreams and astrological phenomena. The gospels do not tell us how many there were. The idea of their being three of them comes from the three gifts they offered. The idea that they were kings did not originate until the third century, primarily inspired by Psalm 72 in which we prayed: “the kings of Tarshish and the Isles shall offer gifts, the kings of Arabia and Seba shall bring tribute. All kings shall pay him homage…” King Herod obviously was not one of those kings who would pay Jesus homage.

Nature and Scripture led them to the infant Jesus. But in finding him they evidently knew they had found something far greater than just another child. The magi disappear from the Scriptures and from history, but the revelation of God’s Son to us, in other words, Epiphany, is not finished with their disappearance. There was his baptism in the Jordan and Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana, for example, which were at one time celebrated as part of this feast. All of Jesus’ miracles were manifestations of his divine power, including and especially the resurrection.

Epiphanies are all around us if we are alert to them. When we have experiences of God’s love and presence, personal epiphanies, they convince us there is a God. But too many people do not move any further in their knowledge and experience of God. They are content with their own personal epiphany and they miss the spiritual growth that comes from diligently searching further for him. There is no spiritual growth for them. Let us return to the analogy of sitting on the beach in Florida. It’s enjoyable to sit there and watch the waves, but takes no effort on our part. To really appreciate the ocean we have to know what many other people have learned in their own travels. The ocean is as much off the coast of Maine as off the coast of South Africa. If we want to know God, we need more than just a couple of experiences of God’s love and presence. This is why we need religion and we need the Church. People say they don’t need organized religion. They don’t realize how practical and helpful it truly is. By limiting our knowledge of the ocean to one tiny location we’ll never get anywhere else or be very safe if we try. If we are to grow and mature in our relationship with God, we need information, especially maps, from others if we want to go somewhere further. We need the experience and guidance of other spiritual persons who can teach us what we do not yet know.

Epiphanies are wonderful. We should take and treasure all those that come our way. But they are meant to be helps along the journey we are all called to make to come to know and to possess the greatest treasure life can offer us in this world or the next, Jesus Christ, whom we can never get enough of. Amen.

(I Sam. 3,3b-10.19; Jn. 1,35-42) Once while I was at another parish I went to visit a lady in the hospital. She was the mother of a large number of children (more than ten), several of them still in grade school. In our visit she disclosed to me that she thought she had a vocation to be a nun. It was both humorous and sad, sad that she was so seriously detached from real life and humorous because with all those children underfoot, I could see why she wanted to get away from it all.

My point is that not every time we think we’re getting a call from God is it really God calling us. Often when he really does call us, his call is not so easy to discern, or if we discern where it’s coming from, we’re not so quick to follow. For example, Moses was in no hurry to take on the job God was asking him to do, even though the message came with unmistakable clarity. Samuel, on the other hand, kept hearing God call, but didn’t know it was God. It was his mentor, the high priest, Eli, who helped him know God’s voice. When I felt God calling me to be a priest, I was excited about the idea until I reached puberty. Then I was hoping the idea would go away, but God kept calling like he did with Samuel. The call to the apostles seems to have taken place over the course of time, as they found themselves attracted by Jesus’ powerful personality. We see in today’s gospel that God’s call does not always come out of the heavens but from another human being. The call to Andrew and an unnamed apostle (probably John) came from John the Baptist. Peter’s call started with Andrew. It took a while after meeting Jesus before they gave up their lucrative business in order to be Jesus’ disciple or as that word means, Jesus’ student.

When God’s calls, we seldom know what we are getting ourselves into if we follow that call. Samuel didn’t know that he would become a leader for God’s people, that he would be a prophet and priest, that he would lead the Israelites into battle, and that he would raise up and depose kings. Mary, the mother of Jesus, didn’t know what she was in for when she said “yes” to God. Nor did the apostles know that they would have to give up more than their fishing business, and that following Jesus would cost them their lives. Mother Teresa felt called to be a nun and started her vocation in the classroom. After almost 20 years of teaching she received what she described as a “call within the call” when she felt called to serve the poorest of the poor and start a new religious order. Martin Luther King could not have had any idea when he was in the seminary and getting “C’s” in public speaking that he would be threatened daily, that he would be imprisoned for standing up for justice, that he would be facing angry crowds with equanimity and prayer for his persecutors, that he would one day be leading 200,000 people to the nation’s capital to dramatize that all of America’s citizens are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nor did he know that an assassin’s bullet would end his life at age 39. If I had known when I entered the seminary some of the difficulties I would have to deal with as a priest, I would have said, “God, I can’t do that. Find someone else.” I’m glad I didn’t know, I’m glad God was with me during hard times, and I’m glad I followed his call.

God’s call sometimes disrupts our comfortable lives. But if God wants us he’ll keep calling, like he did Samuel, as long as there’s a chance we might respond. Sometimes we need help in knowing what God’s saying, sometimes we need to be pointed in the right direction, sometimes we need confirmation from others. For example, when I went to the seminary, the rector and staff didn’t assume that I really had a calling. We had to go through nine years of schooling and a lot of scrutiny before ordination. When the lady in the hospital with all the kids told me she felt called to be a nun, I couldn’t support her. Instead I reminded her that her real vocation was to take care of her children.

I think it’s extremely important to notice that Samuel was already in God’s presence at the place where the Arc of the Covenant was being kept, and it was in the quiet of the night he heard the Lord. Almost every time I have heard the Lord speaking to me, it was when I was praying, reading the Scriptures or meditating.

Our environment calls to us from so many directions: TV, radio, e-mail, cell phones, beepers, billboards, etc., etc. A lot of times God gets put on hold so we can listen to a call from somewhere else. If we want to hear the Lord, we have to put all other voices on hold so God can get through. The only way we can do that is to set time aside. I have a phrase I use for myself all the time regarding prayer: “if you don’t schedule it in, you schedule it out.” We have to make time for the Lord if we’re really going to hear him, and if we don’t, we won’t. Amen.

HOMILY: St. Mark’s gospel is the shortest of the gospels and St. Mark doesn’t spend any time with preliminaries. He opens his gospel with a few words about John the Baptist, then he tells us briefly about Jesus’ baptism and his fasting and temptation in the desert. Last week we heard about Jesus beginning to gather his apostles and today we hear Jesus is already busy teaching and healing. And we’re only at verse 21 in Mark’s first chapter. St. Mark even skips past whatever it was Jesus was preaching about to get right to where the action is. Jesus comes out on the offensive, attacking the powers of evil. Notice it was on the Sabbath, the day the Jews celebrated God delivering his people from slavery. So it’s appropriate that on this particular Sabbath, the man in the gospel was set free from slavery to the devil.