Interfaith Dialogue and Epiphany

The Opening Prayer of the Holy Mass on the Feast of the Epiphany summarizes the message of the three Readings (Is 60:1-6; Eph 3:2-3,5-6; Mat 2:1-12) and the Responsorial Psalm 72.

The Mass celebrant praying with the people with outstretched arms says, “0h God, who revealed to the nations Your Only Begotten by the guidance of a star, grant, in your mercy, that we, who already know you by faith, may be brought to behold the sublime glory of God through Our Lord Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.”

In brief, the people and the priest, who already believe in God, are asking Him, as a sign of mercy, to grant them, as He did to the magi, the opportunity to behold and to adore His Son’s (Psalm 72/gospel) sublime glory (Is 60) in a little baby in the arms of His mother.

How can this be done NOW by the people and the priest? They need the Guiding Star which is the Church whose ministry of Interfaith (interreligious and ecumenical) dialogue will help them discover and adore “the Christ” whose Equivalents are found in other religions of the world (Eph 3:2-3, 5-6).

Although Jesus of Nazareth claimed He was “the Christ” which means “the anointed”, this term has its equivalents in other religions but expressed with different names. We see this very clearly in the Encyclical Letter of Pope St. John Paul II titled Mission of the Redeemer (Redemptoris Missio) No. 56.

He begins by first recalling two Vatican II documents: Ad Gentes (To the Nations), the Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church that seeks to uncover the “seeds of the Word” in other religions through dialogue, and Nostra Aetate (Our Age), a Declaration on the Church’s Relations to Non-Christian Religions where a “ray of that truth which enlightens all men” can be found through the same dialogue. He ends the paragraph with the surprising statement: “Other religions constitute a positive challenge for the Church: they stimulate her both to discover and acknowledge the signs of Christ’s presence and of the working of the Spirit, as well as to examine more deeply her own identity and to bear witness to the fullness of Revelation which she has received for the good of all.”

The bottom line of this humane dialogue is human friendship. It is through this sincere friendship that human beings can rediscover and behold the beauty and dignity of man which in amazement prompted God to become human in Jesus the Christ as Pope John Paul II declared in his first encyclical letter Redeemer of Man (Redemptor Hominis) No. 10. In the Scriptures Glory and Beauty are synonymous. It is through the Risen Lord that it becomes possible (Opening Prayer) to behold.

This is the contemporary ethical message of Epiphany or Christofany. It definitely has immediate implications for harmony, unity and peace in the world. Fyodor Dostoyevsky had said it well in his famous novel, The Idiot: “It is only beauty that can save the world.”