To reveal something means to remove the veil that hides it from sight. Revelation is unveiling, and since the beginning of the human race, the one true God who created this universe and everything in it has been revealing himself to us by drawing back the veil that hides him from our sight a little bit at a time according to our capacity to understand him.
From the beginning we were unable to see God directly because he is not a part of this universe and exists beyond time and space which he created from nothing. But we were able to see him indirectly through the things he made. This cosmos is unimaginably vast and ancient and contains hundreds of billions of galaxies and trillions of stars, and through its meticulous order and its discoverable laws which govern everything in harmony, the universe itself points to the creator we cannot see but without whom no thing would exist.
And then the living God began to unveil himself to individual persons as a means of preparing humanity for the final and full revelation he had planned from the beginning. Starting with Abram of Ur of the Chaldees and his son Isaac and his son Jacob and his twelve sons who became the patriarchs of the tribes of Israel, God unveiled himself in ways they could comprehend and then made with them a covenant that transformed them into a nation whose destiny would be to reveal the living God to all the nations.
Then through Moses and Aaron, God revealed himself further with the Law of Sinai and divine worship in the Tabernacle. Through the Judges and Prophets, God prepared Israel for David’s Kingdom and Solomon’s Temple, and the record of all those ages pointed to the arrival of a descendant of David who would rule for ever, not only over the House of Jacob but over the entire universe.
Even the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt and the conquest of Israel by the Babylonians, Persians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans served to connect the Chosen People to the larger world and plant seeds of the Word of God that would one day allow the Gospel to spread widely and quickly, and “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Galatians 4:4)
The birth of the Lord Jesus Christ was the coming into this world of the light to reveal the living God to the nations, and the three visitors from the East, whose visit to Bethlehem we recall today, signify the first proclamation of the Gospel to the Gentiles and the unveiling of the mystery of salvation to all humanity.
This is part of what Saint Paul explained to the Ephesians by writing in our second lesson that “the mystery was made known to me by revelation: that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.”
Here Paul means that all of non-Jewish humanity can become coheirs with the children of Abraham to the promise God made, a promise to fashion a people for himself in whom he would restore all that was lost in man’s fall from grace. But since the Gentiles are not blood descendants of Abraham, how are they to be added to the Jews as coheirs and copartners in this one people? Paul tells us: in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.
The Gospel is the sum total of all that God has revealed for our salvation, and at the heart of divine revelation is the concept of mystery, or as Saint Paul puts it, the mystery made known by revelation. Mysterion is the Greek word which gives us our word mystery, but it can also be rendered as sacrament. And mysterion is the Greek version of a Hebrew word which the Jews borrowed from the Babylonians who in turn received it from the Persians. That word is raz.
A raz was a plan hidden in the mind of the king, a plan to address a problem, which would remain in the king’s mind until he was ready to make it known to the people. And so the mystery of which Paul writes is the plan which was eternally in the mind of God but which was revealed only gradually in Israel until in the fullness of time that mystery was finally and fully revealed to the entire human race in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This eternal plan of salvation, which was in the mind of the Father before the creation of the universe, is to restore all things in Christ and to overcome the darkness of sin and death by the light of divine revelation. And when the eternal Word became flesh, he was revealed to be the eternal mystery of salvation. In other words, God’s plan is a man, a man who is also God. So the Lord Jesus himself is the mystery or sacrament of our salvation from everlasting death.
At his holy birth the Lord Jesus was attended by the glory of angels and the worship of shepherds from the very same fields where David tended sheep a thousand years before. At the visit of the magi to Bethlehem, the Gentiles were guided to Christ by the light of a star. At his Presentation in the Temple forty days after his birth, Christ was confessed and proclaimed to be the light of the world. And by his teaching of the elders in the Temple when he was but a boy, Christ was revealed to be divine wisdom made man.
At his Baptism in the Jordan, Christ was accompanied by the glory cloud which once filled the Temple as the sign of God’s ineffable presence on earth. By his first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana, Christ revealed his glory and awakened saving faith in his disciples. And by the many miracles of his public life, Christ gave signs of his divine nature through his mastery over all creation.
At his Transfiguration on the holy mountain, the uncreated light of Christ’s divine glory shone forth through his human body. On the Cross the sign of Christ’s death was an eclipse of the sun. And by his Resurrection from the dead, Christ revealed the destruction of death and unveiled the promise of eternal life. And now the Lord Jesus gives a share in his divine glory to all who are united to him by faith, hope, and love.
But if the one, only, living, and true God has been revealing himself in all these ways for all this time, then why do so few people see him in the light of the truth? Well, perhaps because they don’t want to. Listen to Saint Paul writing to the Romans about those who do not know God:
“What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Romans 1:19-21)
This insight of Paul is confirmed by the Apostle John who wrote of Christ and fallen man: “the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light and does not come into the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)
So, foolish and futile unbelief proceeds from and returns to the darkness of disordered self-love, while knowledge of God by the gift of divine revelation proceeds from and returns to the light of truth. Thus the Prophet Isaiah proclaims: “Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you. See, darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds the peoples; but upon you the Lord shines, and over you appears his glory.” (Isaiah 60:1-2)
Friends, to reveal something is to remove the veil that hides it from sight. Those who will repent of their sins and accept the light of the Gospel as the revelation of a mystery, the making known of a hidden thing, the unveiling of the age old plan of salvation can see the eternal Word of God who became man, the Son of Mary, God manifest in the flesh, contemplated by the angels, confessed by Simeon and Anna, and adored by the magi, the Lord God Almighty: Jesus Christ.
This is the text of my homily at Saint Mary’s Church in Greenville, South Carolina for the Solemnity of the Epiphany 2024.
Fr Jay Scott Newman