Epiphany. That is a powerful word that the Lord gives us in the parable of the Prodigal Son. We all know ourselves to be the Prodigal Son, and we are on that journey. We are at different places on the journey, but there is a significant moment on the journey—a moment of epiphany.
An epiphany is an important moment in our lives. It is the moment when we finally see. As the senior monks could tell you, the Epiphany was one of the great feasts of the year. It was a sermon major with a full octave, like Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. Why is the Epiphany such a great feast? It is the feast of the experience, the manifestation when the wondrous mystery that God actually became man. God sent his Son to save us. God the Father sacrificed his supreme Son—his perfect Son—to save us poor, stupid, sinful sons. It is when we have that epiphany… when we come to really know by a divine manifestation what the reality is, then truly do we live.
The Prodigal Son returning home had his whole plan of how this was going to work out. It looked like a beautiful and a good plan. I am going go and prostrate before my father. I am going to kiss his feet, and I am going to say, “Father, I’m not worthy to be your son. Make me a hired servant. I’ll work for you the rest of my life.” He had to completely give up his own plan and accept the father’s plan.
That story, as Jesus told it, was absolutely shocking to his hearers. It was a patriarchal society. The father was it! He had power of life and death over all his children and over all his servants. He was the one whom people did come and kiss his feet. The idea of a father picking up his rope, running out and embracing this smelly little brat who had betrayed him and threw away his heritage was just absolutely incomprehensible to these people.
A talk given on the Rule of Saint Benedict
by Abbot M. Basil Pennington, OCSO
Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery
Thursday, March 8, 2001
