Everything worked out well for the retreat. I gave the closing remarks (which I later shared with Mama & Janet). Here it what I wrote & shared with everyone:
Epiphany
Christmas, Epiphany, the seven sacraments, they are all united by the word celebration. We celebrate Christmas, we celebrate Epiphany as a Church on January 6th, and we celebrate the seven sacraments. As Father Daly does every 7:30 a.m. for us, he celebrates the Mass, he celebrates Eucharist.
The meaning of the word "celebration" is very important. Celebration is to lift up the other person’s gifts. That is what celebration is. It is to lift up.
The celebration of Christmas, Epiphany and the Sacraments puts us in right relationship with God. As believers, we recognize that God created us, that we are created in God’s image, and not God himself. During Epiphany we are reminded of how Kings from the East, men who were honored and revered in their hometowns, followed a star to find Christ the King. I’m sure that people often traveled to see these three Kings, to seek their wisdom, to ask for favors. But these three Kings knew that they weren’t God—rooted in that humility they traveled to find Christ—to celebrate His birth—to lift him up.
When we forgive ourselves for not being everything, when we forgive one another for not being God, we suddenly discover that everyone has something to give that we really need, something that is really important. But we cannot see this truth if we want everything from everybody.
One King did not bring three gifts; each King brought one gift. And in giving their gifts, they lifted Jesus up; they celebrated Him. This is community.
Community is a place where we lift up each other’s gifts. Community doesn’t mean that the bosses are on the top and the followers are underneath. Community is precisely a base for the mutuality of gifts.
The real giving is also an opportunity for others to give something to you.
This is the exciting part about our vocation as Catholic educators. Our call is to be of service to young people who can then reveal their gifts to us, and that is one of the most beautiful things we can do—to receive a gift with an open heart.
Reverend Henri Nouwen, a renowned Catholic priest and author of over 40 books on the spiritual life, devoted many years at the end of his life to Daybreak Ministries— he lived in homes where mentally disabled people and those who assist them live together in community. Born of his experiences of living in these communities, he often wrote and spoke about the importance of recognizing and celebrating the mutuality of gifts in community.
He said that, “As soon as you are able to receive a person’s gift to you, the person who gives the gift to you becomes aware that she has a gift to offer in the first place. I do not know that I have a gift unless you receive it from me. I don’t even know that I have a gift unless you say thank you. If you say to me the words you spoke were helpful, then I say to myself, I said something helpful, but not before that. Only then do I discover that I have a gift to offer. If I give you my watch as a gift and you never wear it, then it never becomes a gift. You have to wear it. If I give you a painting and you put it in the cellar, it doesn’t become a gift. It is only a gift when you say, “Henri, your painting is hanging on my main wall.” Then I have really given him something.”
The importance of receiving with an open heart is not lost on children. The fun in giving to children is to see how they respond to the gift—to see their faces light up.
And for those of you who received a gift from a young child this Christmas, can you recall how they closely watched you tear the wrapping, open the gift, and react to what they perhaps made or bought for you? I remember one Christmas when I made a necklace at school for my mom out of macaroni shells. I remember being so excited to put the gift all wrapped up in tissue paper under the tree. I remember walking it over to her on Christmas morning and I may in fact have been jumping up and down out of anticipation as she opened it. Being the loving and compassionate mother she was, she was appropriately thrilled by the gift and ooed and awed over each macaroni shell. I was elated. But I tell you that that feeling was nothing compared to when I saw her that next week putting on the necklace as she and my dad got all dressed up to go out to dinner. It was THEN that I knew she had truly received the gift; it was THEN that the gift became a gift.
And so now I pause to thank Michelle for sharing her gift of liturgical music and to thank Jeff for leading us so beautifully through the poem Eucharist. Through this gratitude, this receiving, their giving is made more complete.
So giving is important, but receiving can often be more important because by receiving you are nurtured and the person who nurtures you discovers more about himself or herself—discovers and better understands his or her own gifts. That mutuality of giving and receiving, that mutuality of celebrating each other’s gifts is what creates community.
The paradox of Epiphany lies in the heart of this mutuality.
The three kings brought gifts to baby Jesus, but in doing so they were giving gifts back to THE Giver. They were receiving from the Giver through their giving to the Giver.
After all, all that they had to give Jesus was originally given to them by God; for everything is, in fact, a gift.
So when they gave Jesus the gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh, they were returning to Jesus what He had given them. In other words, the 3 Kings only truly received their gifts from Jesus when they gave them to Him. By using the gifts they had been given by giving them to the Giver; they were both receiving and giving at the same time. This is why the Epiphany is considered one of the signs of Jesus’ divinity; gold represents Jesus as King, frankincense, the gift of incense, represents the homage due to Divinity, and myrrh prefigures Jesus’ death.
The 3 Kings celebrated Jesus’ birth, his Divinity, by literally lifting up to him His gifts.
This perfect union, this marriage of giving and receiving, is what takes place in every Sacrament; we receive Jesus as he gives of Himself in the Eucharist; a couple through the Sacrament of Marriage gives their individuality for union with one another and Christ; in Reconciliation we give up our sins and receive forgiveness—we give up to become more whole.
This perfect union, this marriage of giving and receiving, is also what takes place when we return our gifts given to us by the Giver to THE Giver.
As we celebrate, to lift up the other’s gifts, Epiphany it is a time for us to remember the gifts that we have been given and to challenge us to, like the 3 Kings, return the gifts to God.
How can we return our gifts to God, to create the most perfect marriage of giving and receiving, when Jesus is not alive here crying and cooing in this crèche?
Our role in the Catholic Church as a Catholic school is upward, inward, and outward. In other words, we are here to worship God, build up one another—through celebrating, lifting up, the other’s gifts, and to reach out to one another and our students with the Gospel. By lifting up our gifts to God, by using the unique gifts and talents we have been blessed with for God’s greater glory, it is then that we return our gifts to God, and, in so doing, wonderfully receive them. Again, it is in giving that you receive from God, since all that we have has been given to us by God, and as the Parable of the Talents reminds us, God expects us to wisely use our blessings as good stewards of His vineyard.
How can we, like the 3 Kings, give gifts to the Giver?
The little Drummer boy thought that he did not have a gift to bring, a gift fit to give the King. But in the course of the little song, the Little Drummer Boy realizes, as we should too, that the gifts God has placed in our lives are always the best ones for us, and the ones that we should use in celebrating Him. So, the little Drummer plays for him on his drum, Mary nodded, the ox and lamb kept time, and in playing his best for Jesus, Jesus smiled at him and his drum.
In Cantata 65 of the music Bach wrote for the Mass of the Epiphany, Bach also wrestles with what he can present to Christ the King, and he settles upon humbly offering his heart, which is filled with the fruits of the Holy Spirit: the gold of faith, the frankincense of prayer, and the myrrh of patience.
What gifts have you been given? What gifts can you lift up to God? What gifts will YOU, like the Wise Men, bring to the feet of Jesus, and, in so doing, bring others closer to God?
Consider the gifts of the Holy Spirit that Jeff Stewart beautifully outlined and defined at last year’s PLC, consider the gifts that you know you have been given because they have been lovingly received by others, consider the various gifts that we have discussed today.
Will you return to God the gift of faith, patience, prayer, compassion, sympathy, forgiveness, empathy, respect, time, gentleness, wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, or piety…the gift of your heart?
Please take a few minutes to search your heart to determine the gifts that you have been blessed with, the gifts that you, like the wise men, can then bring to the feet of Jesus by sharing these gifts with others, and, in so doing, serve as a conduit of Christ’s love to others.
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