HAVE YOU EVER HAD AN EPIPHANY?

 
          Chances are, you have but didn’t realize it at the time (or perhaps even now).  That’s OK!   Most of mine have been minor, but here are some of them.
 
In my junior year at Notre Dame, in our Church History seminar, I read The Revelations of Divine Love by Mother Julian of Norwich.  Her writing is so direct, so simple, so faith-filled, so positive!  Little did I know that a couple of years later I’d be taking part in the Norwich cathedral during the celebrations for the 600th anniversary of her visions!
 
          While a graduate student at Oxford, I took a winter holiday which ended up in Rome.  After an overnight train ride from Zurich, I arrived and found the pensione where I would be staying—very near to the train station (Stazione Termini).  Then I decided to walk from there to St Peter’s, perhaps 3 miles or so away.   Coming to the piazza from a side street, I was overwhelmed by the scale and balance; I was even more blown away by the interior!  I had come full of the conviction that it would reek of excess, but I fell in love with that church and attended Mass every evening that I was there.  
 
          In my first year of seminary in Rome, we did a number of day-trips during the weeks we newbies were “learning” Italian.  But our first overnight excursion was to Assisi.   As the train was pulling into the station, I remember looking up at the town, about a mile overhead on the side of the mountain, and I was overwhelmed by a sense of peace (pretty appropriate an experience in light of Francis as the saint of the poor and the saint of peace!).   That sense fills me every time I return there, and most of you know that I go there every now and then!
          
          When my Mother died in 2005, in preparing for her funeral, I discovered that she’d recently read Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet In Heaven.  Some months later I read it (in between many tears), and I was shown the powerful meaning of relationships, sacrifice, love, forgiveness, and healing.  
 
          This past year, during my “troubles” (as the Irish might call them), I was made so vividly aware of the power of prayer—so many people reached out to me, promising prayers and promising love.   Folks told me, later, that they thought I was so strong for how I held up during this time, but that’s not the case.   The truth is that many, many prayers were holding me up.  I cannot be thankful enough.
 
          St Ignatius’ Consciousness Examen is designed so that when unrecognized epiphanies happen in our lives, we can retrospectively discover them and give thanks.  We have more epiphanies, more blessings, than we realize.  Our goal in realizing this should simply be gratitude.