"Overjoyed at Seeing Jesus" - Feast of the Epiphany Homily

2025.

It's a nice round number for a Jubilee.

Going back to biblical times, Jubilees celebrated every 25 years.

The theme of Jubilee 2025 is Pilgrims of Hope.

We might think of ourselves as pilgrims in general on Earth.

kind of roaming and passing through this life to where St.

Paul says our citizenship is in heaven, Philippians 3.

So we'll give you more events as the Jubilee unfolds, but it's a special year of grace in the church.

It's a special year for pilgrimage.

Again, the theme is Pilgrim of Hope.

So we think of

Making a sacred journey, a sacred trip.

Be on the lookout for an invitation for someone for a sacred place in our country or around the world or sacred events, something that is for God or the things of God.

We take vacations and we make pilgrimages.

These are holy journeys.

Again, the word holy means other.

So these are journeys for God or the things of God.

And it gets even more complete in terms of our faith with that word other.

Because you might go for a specific religious or spiritual reason, but then you're in the culture of something other than your usual experience in the church.

For example, people who go to Lourdes for healing.

And people all around the world go to Lourdes for healing.

And while you're there, you experience Mass in French, you meet French Catholics, you hear the history, and you realize in the United States we are basically a baby church.

And you go to Europe, it's like they've been at this for a much longer time than we have.

And so you get a sense of the size and the breadth and the beauty of the Catholic Church.

Pilgrimages require sacrifice, inconveniences, going out of your comfort zone, being on a group schedule, not your own.

It's part of the deal.

And to offer those up, to embrace those with joy, probably the best example I see every year is the pilgrims that come from all over the country, most of whom are young people,

to our city for the March for Life.

So we have pilgrims coming again from West Point, about 50 Army cadets.

We're sleeping on the floor in Founders Hall the night before the march.

Not showering, P-U.

But they embrace it with joy.

And so it's inspiring to see people on pilgrimages.

And the focus for them gets them through all the challenges.

And the promise for those on pilgrimage, and you might apply this to life in general, for all on pilgrimage, in life is the good outweighs the bad.

Whatever inconveniences or challenges or suffering on pilgrimage, to know that the goal will outweigh all those challenges.

That was the experience of the Magi, who made an all-time pilgrimage.

to see Jesus.

They traveled 1,200 miles, encountered their own share of difficulties, challenges, inconveniences.

was a 60-day journey.

I know if you and I have ever been on a trip that long for Jesus, that long with pilgrimages, with camels.

And then it got dangerous when Herod got involved.

So there are many challenges.

There were many challenges for the magi.

But then the good outweigh the bad.

And we have this image of overflowing from Isaiah, who seemed to have predicted this very event, talking about gold and frankincense.

But what they would see when they got to the gold, after all that travel, all that difficulty, all that fear and worry, is this going to actually happen.

you shall be radiant at what you see.

And when I first got to Lourdes, and I saw beyond the miraculous water in the baths, crutches and wheelchairs and walkers, people didn't need them anymore.

That was one of the greatest sights I've ever seen.

You get to that spot, they got to the spot, it was beyond anything they anticipated for 60 days.

Your heart shall thrive and overflow." And then the Gospel captured that exact wording, basically.

They were overjoyed at seeing the star, at seeing the child, at seeing the scene.

And I imagine, if you've been on pilgrimage, you probably share this sentiment, that it changed their lives forever.

these pilgrimage experiences are life-changing.

And so they went back, you know, different way, but they went back a long haul again, and they probably shared the story as I'm sharing you my Lourdes story.

It's like it just happened, and there's that same overjoy.

So the challenges are high, but then the good is higher, kind of overflowing, outdoing the challenges.

So I'm a big believer in pilgrimages.

It's a year of pilgrimage, a year of grace.

Pilgrimage is before, during, and after.

I should say, grace is before, during, and after pilgrimages.

the month after I made a pilgrimage to Rome for Mother Teresa's Beatification in 2003, I had the clearest and strongest, most attractive experience of a calling to the priesthood.

So the very thing you might come into this new year thinking, yeah, maybe it'll happen, I'll pray for it.

You might be invited on pilgrimage for that very thing.

Or you go for healing in this thing or that kind of prayer experience and then something else happens, something other.

That's what a pilgrimage opens us to, the other.

You made a pilgrimage coming here this morning.

Maybe not as far.

as you might think, a pilgrimage could be, but you did come here to see Jesus.

And there's difficulties involved or inconveniences, especially when get into the football playoffs and looking at other things like maybe snow, maybe within your family.

We have the healing Mass today, and those folks have a physical struggle every single time to come to church.

And the promise through the Magi is the good will outweigh the bad.

The rewards will outweigh and overflow the challenges.

We have it even better than them.

They were overjoyed at their experience of seeing Jesus.

I hope that's your experience here.

That you are overjoyed and you leave with that overjoyed.

But we have it even better than them.

We not only come to see Jesus.

but to have Him within us.