Today is the last Sunday after the Epiphany. Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Every Friday throughout Lent Saint Mary’s offers a devotion called Stations of the Cross. I happened to do a good amount of research into the Stations this past week on a whim and summed up some of what I found in a blurb in the Angelus.
There are a lot of different devotions or devotional services: the Rosary, Benediction, Stations of the Cross, The Watch following Maundy Thursday, and plenty of others. One of the things I find interesting about many of these devotions is that they are often without set form. They are often adapted to different parishes or individuals. For example, if you trace how people have done the Stations of the Cross throughout the last thousand years, you will find that many Christians walked a different amount of stations – sometimes as few as 7, sometimes as many as 35. The stations themselves have also varied. At one point there was a tradition of 7 Falls of Jesus. Apparently four of these falls were attached to individuals in some way assisting Jesus: his mother, Simon of Cyrene, Veronica, and the women of Jerusalem. Over time, these individuals overshadowed the fall itself leaving us with three falls and four encounters along the way.
There will always be people out there who will claim that Stations has always been done a certain way and that varying from that format means that you are not really doing it. I’ve heard of people complaining that we don’t do Benediction correctly because of this or that is out of order. That’s nonsense. What matters is that the devotion has in same way opened our hearts to the presence of God among us. How that happens means a great deal only because it is through the differences in our devotions and worship that God reaches different people in different ways.
I think that the is exactly the point of the Sundays after the Epiphany which points to several moments in the life and ministry of Jesus where he was revealed to different people in radically different ways. Jesus is revealed to those around him through astrological signs and ancient prophesies. He is revealed at his Baptism by the presence of the Holy Spirit and a voice from heaven. He is revealed through a number of different miracles, turning water into wine, healing and curing people, providing abundant food out of almost nothing.
Today we conclude this cycle with the transfiguration. I’ve always been amused that Saint Peter is the one who doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on. He wants to build some tents, presumably to keep this scene going for a while – maybe even recreate the forty days Moses spent with God on the Mountain. How Jesus is revealed to those around him means a great deal only because God reaches different people in different ways.
The apostles all encountered Christ in different ways, but they all preached the same message of the Love of God for all of us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. In all of the Gospel accounts it is only after encountering the risen Lord that the apostles were able to make sense of what they had seen and heard during Jesus’ ministry. I think for us today the same is true.
There are many different devotions, many different ways of doing church, many different ways of trying to help spread the love of God to others and reveal Christ. I think a two good Lenten questions to ponder and try to live out an answer to is this:
1) In what ways has Jesus been revealed to me?
2) I what ways can I reveal Jesus Christ to someone else?
Each of us has different answers to those questions and it is through those differences that the Good News of Christ continues to spread to new and different people every day.
1) In what ways has Jesus been revealed to me?
2) I what ways can I reveal Jesus Christ to someone else?
