A LITURGY OF EPIPHANY

Come, Creator; come, Jesus Christ; come, Holy Spirit!—be in us and shine upon us this day. Be in us compassion for the broken heart, and healing for the broken bones, and grace for the day's journey. Be in us silence for listening to the truths of heaven in our midst.

Gracious God, find in us those places where we truly repent and receive the confession of our hearts where we have wounded the innocent, betrayed the just, denied the true, even ourselves. Make our anguish real, our return steady. Help us stand firm against the evil in and around us, even as we falter and fall again; hold us in thy everlasting compassion, and transform us in the image of thy joy. Amen.


There is the mystery of the love of the heart toward God. When it happens in a person, it is a free uncalculating affair not unlike falling in love for the first time. It can make an ordinary person into a St. Francis; and when it occurs among a whole people, most extraordinary things follow among neighbors and between enemies. The love of God that the heart knows is very tangible. Just as the lover must somehow shower the beloved with gifts and acts of freedom and graciousness, so those who love God with the heart set about finding ways to please the Beloved.

There is no special place to begin, no order in which this compassion is shown. It can begin simply by loving the world God has made—an always awakening to the spaciousness of daylight, the passion of colors, the touch of winds, the sing-song of sparrows. It includes kindness toward all humanity and being; because every person is God's, named by God and with a purpose and a meaning given by God. So the heart's love toward God encompasses all that Jesus said about love and justice--feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and the prisoner. This is not just a matter of duty. It is a way of entering into God's ethos of forgiveness and eternal light.