Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of Epiphany. The word epiphany, in common usage, has come to mean a moment when someone grasps a truth or has a sudden revelation.

As we celebrate “the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel, Son of God and Saviour of the world,” today’s feast must mark the epiphany of all epiphanies.

The adoring magi who went to Bethlehem to seek out the infant king find themselves embraced by his light. Ironically, it is on this feast that the Gospel also reveals the heart of King Herod and the fear that gripped the hearts of all in Jerusalem at the time of the magi’s visit.

St Matthew says Herod “was perturbed and so was the whole of Jerusalem”. People who use their power to bring fear into the lives of other persons, are often themselves victims of fear. When fear is left hidden in the darkness of the heart it can easily lead to evil.

Herod is a pitiable figure. He pretends to see the light which the visitors from the east were offering to show him. But he is trapped in the darkness of his own fear and so, when he recognises that he has been outwitted, he sets about a massacre of the infants.

To what extent has a similar kind of fear led to the tribal violence that saw over 300 killed last week in Kenya over presidential election results, widely believed to be fraudulent?

Some 50 of those who died were burnt in a church as they sought escape from their rivals. To what extent did this fear lead, a week earlier, to the assassination of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto? To what extent has it led to the galloping murder rate in our own nation?

Living above fear

The violence in our country, which has reached alarming proportions, has brought its own fears in those who see the danger to those whom they love and to themselves.

Archbishop Edward Gilbert alluded to those fears in his homily on New Year’s Eve at the Cathedral. He appealed to the faithful not to allow evil to force them to live in fear. He was speaking to a full Church of worshippers who must have gathered there at the start of a New Year to find hope.

The Archbishop assured them they had every reason to be hopeful, to live above fear. The God of history, he said, has intervened in the past, is intervening now and will intervene in the future.

On this Feast of the Epiphany, the Church reminds the world that those who journeyed to Bethlehem, and encountered the light of the Christ child, found hope and truth.

Those who seek after good have the power to chase away the shadows. More will be achieved by those who are on the side of good (notably they are far more than those who seek to do evil) if they are able to journey together – to do so in community. The Archbishop warned his listeners: “Do not move into the New Year on your own!”

The message of Epiphany invites us to let the light in; to “find another way” – not the way of Herod. If in our families, and in our parish communities we begin to care for those who are broken and those families who have been affected by the brutal violence, then already we begin to let the light in.