THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD - 2026

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

We saw his star as it rose
and have come to do the Lord homage. MT 2:2

ISAIAH 60:1-6

My Soul's Beloved, 

This passage from Isaiah comes alive when read and understood in the light of the Gospels. All that God has ever promised us from the dawn of creation, when He made the world by the power of His Word, His Eternal Word that became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, is fulfilled. The Catholic Church was instituted by You. She is Your Bride. Yes, she is stained, and wrinkled, and torn in places, but she is irrevocably Yours. Every one of us who is baptized is grafted onto You. We draw our life from Your Holy Spirit. The deeper we are rooted in You, Beloved, the stronger we are, and the more effectively we will carry out the mission entrusted to us.

Nothing in this life will ever give us peace, joy, and a sense of belonging to Someone greater than anything we can imagine, when we know and believe that we are citizens of the New Jerusalem and the Light of the World shines in us. We no longer walk in the darkness of sin, despair, fear, and death. God has declared that we are His. We are children of the Father who delights in sharing His Fatherhood with You as His adopted children.  

You are a God of contradiction and those who are in the world and of the world and even all those who call themselves Christians but reject the fullness of goodness, beauty and truth found only in the Church, Your Bride, will never grasp the absolute splendour and embrace the unfathomable mysteries of a God who humbly stooped so low, leaving the splendour of heaven behind and entering the womb of the Virgin Mother in poverty, in littleness, in total helplessness beginning with Your conception, Your birth, Your life, Your death, and Your glorious resurrection. Thank You for the ineffable gift of being born into a Catholic home and the gift of my baptism.

Arise, shine out, Jerusalem, for your light has come,
the glory of the Lord is rising on you,
though night still covers the earth
and darkness the peoples.
Above you the Lord now rises
and above you his glory appears.
The nations come to your light
and kings to your dawning brightness.
Lift up your eyes and look round:
all are assembling and coming towards you,
your sons from far away
and your daughters being tenderly carried.
At this sight you will grow radiant,
your heart throbbing and full;
since the riches of the sea will flow to you,
the wealth of the nations come to you;
camels in throngs will cover you,
and dromedaries of Midian and Ephah;
everyone in Sheba will come,
bringing gold and incense
and singing the praise of the Lord.

PSALM 71(72):1-2,7-8,10-13

All nations shall fall prostrate before you, O Lord.

O God, give your judgement to the king,
to a king’s son your justice,
that he may judge your people in justice
and your poor in right judgement.

In his days justice shall flourish
and peace till the moon fails.
He shall rule from sea to sea,
from the Great River to earth’s bounds.

The kings of Tarshish and the sea coasts
shall pay him tribute.
The kings of Sheba and Seba
shall bring him gifts.
Before him all kings shall fall prostrate,
all nations shall serve him.

For he shall save the poor when they cry
and the needy who are helpless.
He will have pity on the weak
and save the lives of the poor.

All nations shall fall prostrate before you, O Lord.

EPHESIANS  3:2-3,5-6

My Soul's Beloved,

The life and conversion of St. Paul from Saul gives us, abject sinners, hope. Saul did not seek You; You sought him. You came to him on behalf of the members of Your Body that he was persecuting and made it known to him that it was You that he was persecuting in truth. You brought him to his knees, and You blinded him for a while so he could, in darkness, humbly encounter the Light of the world. See You face to face and recognize that You, who are God, identify Yourself wholly and completely with every one of us who, through our baptism, are grafted onto You.

No one is excluded from receiving the free gift of faith through baptism. All are welcome. The invitation is thrown open to all. Grace is available freely to all who desire it. But it takes humility and obedience to give up our old ways, old thoughts, old ideas, emptying ourselves of all that is not of God so we can receive what is of God, from God, and is God. It takes humility to admit that what we once thought to be right and true is, in fact, just counterfeit, dross, not gold. Saul did that, and becoming Paul was the greatest evangelist of all time to the Gentiles. What You did for him, You will do for anyone willing to submit and yield wholly to You and Your will.

You have probably heard how I have been entrusted by God with the grace he meant for you, and that it was by a revelation that I was given the knowledge of the mystery. This mystery that has now been revealed through the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets was unknown to any men in past generations; it means that pagans now share the same inheritance, that they are parts of the same body, and that the same promise has been made to them, in Jesus Christ, through the gospel.

MATTHEW 2:1-12

My Soul's Beloved, 

The world is chock full of people like Herod. When the wise men made known to him their mission in seeking the infant king of the Jews, he, seemingly ignorant of the prophecies, called together all he thought would be in the know, to inquire with them about where You, the Christ, was to be born. The world is filled with prideful academics and scholars who feverishly study all the faiths, but do so only for the sake of knowledge. Their knowledge, however, does not lead them to the trut,h and even if it does, they lack the courage to make that leap of faith that will make them children of God and heirs to His Kingdom.

Herod's reaction to being told the prophecy was fear, for he thought his throne was  threatened:

‘At Bethlehem in Judaea,’ they told him ‘for this is what the prophet wrote:
And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
you are by no means least among the leaders of Judah,
for out of you will come a leader
who will shepherd my people Israel.’

He was interested in the newborn King only to seek and destroy and eliminate the threat to his rule. He made the wise men promise that they would report back to him, lying to them that he also wanted to pay the little Babe homage. But even though it appeared that the Son of God and the Son of Mary, with Joseph, were hidden in obscurity from the mighty, the boastful, and the proud, God Himself, along with all the angels in heaven, was looking down and lovingly keeping watch over them. Protecting them from all Your enemies until Your hour had arrived. In that hour, it would be You who would give Yourself up to them. 

Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Magi, the epiphany of our Savior and King of Kings and Lord of Lords. With them, Beloved, we too bow down before You, offer You our worship, and the poor gift of ourselves. We are Yours now and forever.

After Jesus had been born at Bethlehem in Judaea during the reign of King Herod, some wise men came to Jerusalem from the east. ‘Where is the infant king of the Jews?’ they asked. ‘We saw his star as it rose and have come to do him homage.’ When King Herod heard this he was perturbed, and so was the whole of Jerusalem. He called together all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, and enquired of them where the Christ was to be born. ‘At Bethlehem in Judaea,’ they told him ‘for this is what the prophet wrote:
And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
you are by no means least among the leaders of Judah,
for out of you will come a leader
who will shepherd my people Israel.’
Then Herod summoned the wise men to see him privately. He asked them the exact date on which the star had appeared, and sent them on to Bethlehem. ‘Go and find out all about the child,’ he said ‘and when you have found him, let me know, so that I too may go and do him homage.’ Having listened to what the king had to say, they set out. And there in front of them was the star they had seen rising; it went forward, and halted over the place where the child was. The sight of the star filled them with delight, and going into the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling to their knees they did him homage. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. But they were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, and returned to their own country by a different way.

SAINTS BASIL THE GREAT AND GREGORY NAZIANZEN, BISHOPS, DOCTORS - 2026

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

At various times in the past
and in various different ways,
God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets;
but in our own time, the last days,
he has spoken to us through his Son. HEB 1:2

1 JOHN 2:22-28

My Soul's Beloved, 

How much longer, Lord, until those who ought to know better refuse to give You the honor, the praise, the obedience, and above all the love that is due to You? They received the gratuitous gift of faith through baptism, a priceless gift, but they have failed to recognize its value and act on it. My heart breaks for those members of my family, Lord, who are so lost to the pleasures of the world, to concupiscence and acedia that they live life superficially. They are like moths seeking the flame that will destroy them, and yet they throw themselves headlong into the meaningless and empty distractions of the world. The real antichrists are those who know the truth yet refuse to believe and act on it. It is the revealed Truth. God Himself pierced the veil of time and came among us as one of us. You were put to death before, and You continue to be put to death by those who are baptized yet indifferent to the things that will finally mean eternal life or eternal death.

They don't deny You Beloved, they just prefer their beige existence to living a life transformed by love for You and by the Holy Spirit. I will continue to pray, Lord, and I will try not to be too sad and weighed down by my grief for their lack of love for the faith that was Your precious gift to them. Help me, Lord. Sometimes the weight of my sorrow for their lack of faith, as well as my fear that they will be lost forever, fills me with grief that death may part us not just in time but also in eternity.

The man who denies that Jesus is the Christ –
he is the liar,
he is Antichrist;
and he is denying the Father as well as the Son,
because no one who has the Father can deny the Son,
and to acknowledge the Son is to have the Father as well.
Keep alive in yourselves what you were taught in the beginning:
as long as what you were taught in the beginning is alive in you,
you will live in the Son
and in the Father;
and what is promised to you by his own promise
is eternal life.
This is all that I am writing to you about the people who are trying to lead you astray.
But you have not lost the anointing that he gave you,
and you do not need anyone to teach you;
the anointing he gave teaches you everything;
you are anointed with truth, not with a lie,
and as it has taught you, so you must stay in him.
Live in Christ, then, my children,
so that if he appears, we may have full confidence,
and not turn from him in shame
at his coming.

PSALM 97(98):1-4

All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

Sing a new song to the Lord
for he has worked wonders.
His right hand and his holy arm
have brought salvation.

The Lord has made known his salvation;
has shown his justice to the nations.
He has remembered his truth and love
for the house of Israel.

All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
Shout to the Lord, all the earth,
ring out your joy.

All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

JOHN 1:19-28

My Soul's Beloved, 

We must all be like John the Baptist, knowing the truth, we must spend every moment of our lives sharing the truth that sets all people everywhere free. John was aware of the mission entrusted to him to make way for the One who is to come. We, too, must make the way ready for Your second coming in glory and majesty. So many do not know You. So many know You but are indifferent, careless, too caught up with trifles, while the oil in their lamps has run dry.

They are fast asleep, exhausted by their frantic chase of the world's illusory promises, yet so fixated on the temporary pleasure of the flesh and the siren call of the world. The Bridegroom is coming. You are almost here, Lord. We are running out of time. You warn that death comes like a thief in the night, and when he does arrive, Lord, they will discover to their horror that the Bridegroom has come and gone and the gates of the Kingdom of God have been shut to them forever. 

This is how John appeared as a witness. When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ he not only declared, but he declared quite openly, ‘I am not the Christ.’ ‘Well then,’ they asked ‘are you Elijah?’ ‘I am not’ he said. ‘Are you the Prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ So they said to him, ‘Who are you? We must take back an answer to those who sent us. What have you to say about yourself?’ So John said, ‘I am, as Isaiah prophesied:
a voice that cries in the wilderness:
Make a straight way for the Lord.’
Now these men had been sent by the Pharisees, and they put this further question to him, ‘Why are you baptising if you are not the Christ, and not Elijah, and not the prophet?’ John replied, ‘I baptise with water; but there stands among you – unknown to you – the one who is coming after me; and I am not fit to undo his sandal-strap.’ This happened at Bethany, on the far side of the Jordan, where John was baptising.