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Dear St. Christopher’s Family,
On Tuesday, the Church observed the Feast of the Epiphany, or as many call it, Three Kings Day. We've now closed the season of Christmas. It’s the shortest of the Church’s seasons, lasting only twelve days. On Sunday, we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord, which marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and offers us the stories of how Christ, during the time of his ministry, showed us who he was by all manner of signs: the Wedding at Cana, the Transfiguration, etc.
But just for these couple of days, between now and Sunday, I’d like to invite you to think and pray about that period we know nothing about: Jesus’ childhood and young adulthood. In the Great Litany, we remember the events of Christ’s life among us and pray: Good Lord, deliver us. In many ancient forms, prior to Cranmer’s revision in 1544, among those events was the verse: By your hidden life, Good Lord, deliver us. This is the life Jesus had that wasn’t about traveling, or teaching, or saving us poor sinners. It’s a message that even Jesus had a Life that he was meant to enjoy, dream about, and have hope. If this life was simply a preparation for an afterlife, and, as Cynics, Stoics, and the writer of Ecclesiastes profess, is nothing but vanity and sorrow, our Lord wouldn’t have bothered with it.
It is this Hidden Life that makes our Monday through Saturday just as holy as when we gather in the presence of Christ every Sunday. And even in sorrow, Jesus’ Hidden Life makes it clear that, in spite of the vanity and sorrow, joy is the point of the life God gives each of us.
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