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A priest’s brother who is recovering from his addiction to drugs told his brother, “Religion used to be for me because I didn’t want to go to hell.” Now, having been making day-by-day progress in battling his personal demons, the priest’s brother continued, “Religion today for me is holding God’s hand every day because I’ve been to hell and I don’t want to go back.” I suspect this fellow’s previous idea about the nature and purpose of religion is one that many people—and perhaps many of us—hold. We “follow the rules” in the “game of life” because we fear the specter of spending an eternity in a place where we will experience suffering beyond all human imagining. Yet, as today’s Solemnity of the Epiphany reminds us, while fear can be a very powerful motivating force in the game of life, it has absolutely nothing to do with the practice of true religion as this relates to eternal life. The nature and purpose of true religion is to make it possible for us to recognize those small and, for some of us, those very big ways that we’ve had the foretaste of or actually have been to hell. Then, by showing us a better pathway, true religion assists us to muster up the courage so that we don’t want to go back to those places ever again. This is how true religion provides an “epiphany.” It assists us to recognize or to have revealed in a fresh and more vivid way God’s presence in our lives so that, by grasping hold of God’s hand and trusting in God’s providence to lead us along a better pathway, we become successful in battling our personal demons day in and day out. We no longer live in the past, fearing the torments of hell for what we have done. We don’t live in the future. No, we live in the present—somewhere between “here” and “there”—but experience in all the difficulties, tensions, and suspense characterizing this terrain, the peace and joy of God’s kingdom which, St. Paul says, “is beyond all human understanding.” Although most young people here today suffer from cultural depravation, they don’t even know it. For example, they are clueless about the famous movie director named Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, who produced all those suspense-filled, psychological thrillers featuring gallows humor as well as a very frightening television series. His career spanned six decades during the mid-20th century. For those of us who viewed those dozens of fright-inducing and scary movies, perhaps “The Birds” and “Psycho” stand out in our memories as inducing in us the greatest amount of fear. Despite his success which earned Alfred Hitchcock the title “Best Film Director of All Time” by The Screen Directory and he was nominated for six Oscars, Hitchcock was never awarded one Oscar. Most of us who watched the Alfred Hitchcock Hour remember its theme song, Charles Gounods’ “Funeral March of a Marionette.” Yet, even those of us who experienced Hitchcock’s success as a director likely don’t know that he was born, raised, and died a Catholic. Perhaps it was because Hitchcock was a devout Catholic that he was never awarded an Oscar. Considering today’s Solemnity, more important is that Alfred Hitchcock once described an epiphany he experienced when he was only six years old, a manifestation of God’s presence in his life that guided Hitchcock’s life and work from that day forward, living as he did in the terrain of the present—somewhere between “here” and “there”—with all the difficulties, tensions, and suspense characterizing this terrain. The youngest of three children, Alfred Joseph Hitchcock grew up in a London neighborhood where he and his family were the only Catholics. His parents were very loving, but equally strict Catholics meaning that the Hitchcock children couldn’t get away with very much. In fact, Hitchcock once reported that his mother would make him address her while standing at the foot of his mother’s bed, especially if he had behaved badly, at times forcing him to stand there for hours. Educated by the Jesuits in London, another arguably challenging experience, “Alf” described his youth as extremely lonely and sheltered, a situation compounded by his juvenile obesity. On one very dark, cold, and foggy London evening around five o’clock—this sounds like the beginning of one of Hitchcock’s movies—his father said, “Alf, here is a note. Take it around the corner to the magistrate’s station. Give the note to the magistrate. He’ll read it, and then you come home.” Obedient to his father, Alf ambled out the front door and into the London fog, walking through the cold and darkness to the magistrate’s station. Once there, Alf walked up to the desk and handed the note to the magistrate. Just as Alf’s father said, the magistrate opened the note, read it, closed it, and put it back in the envelope. But, the magistrate then did something rather surprising that Alf wasn’t prepared for: the magistrate took Alf by his five pudgy fingers and led him down the spiral staircase of the magistrate’s station to a long, dungeon-like corridor where the jail cells were located. It just so happened this particular night all of the prison cells were empty. The magistrate led Alf into one of the cells, turned and walked out leaving him alone in the cell, then closed and locked the cell, and climbed back up the spiral staircase, turning out all the lights. Filled with fear and spinning around and around in the cell and terrified not knowing how or if he would ever be released, Alf pulled out his rosary and started to say a Hail Mary. Immediately, the lights came on! It was only five minutes later, but Hitchcock estimated at the time it was five hundred years. The magistrate ambled down the spiral staircase and opened the cell. Taking Alf by the hand, the magistrate brought Alf up the spiral staircase, ushering him out of the magistrate’s station and back into the cold and darkness of the London fog. On Alf’s way out the door, the magistrate said, “Alf, you go home now. Your father wrote in the note that I was to show you what happens to little boys who grow up to be bad boys.” The BBC commentator was incredulous and said, “Oh, well. You were just lucky that you started to pray and the magistrate came and let you out. Most people don’t get such fast answers.” Hitchcock paused a long time and then said, “No. You see, God, in His plan for us, sometimes there is a long suspense. And, as a lot of you—if not everybody here—knows, it takes a lot of courage to get through that suspense, hanging on just to the prayer.” For Alf Hitchcock at six years of age, the fear and spinning around and around in the darkness of the magistrate’s cell provided an epiphany, the lesson of which he spent the rest of his life teaching through his movies and television series! That is, in the present reality—the place between “here” and “there”—difficulties, tensions, and suspense characterize this terrain. We can allow those things to make us fearful and ever more fearful until we spin around and around completely out of control. Or, as Hitchcock learned, we can hang on just to the prayer knowing that God is ultimately in control and, trusting in God’s providence, all the suspense to play out. We call today “Epiphany Sunday” and while the readings from scripture direct our attention to the three wise men—the magi from the East, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar—who likely belonged to the priestly caste of the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia (today’s Iraq and Iran), what is important about these three men—and why they are important in the Christian tradition—is that the magi were highly educated and spent their lives pursuing the truth as honestly as they could. The magi paid particular attention to the stars, gaining an international reputation for being expert astrologers, which at the time was highly regarded as a science. Their religious practices and use of astrology were akin to what we would today call “occult practices” and the name used to describe these “scientists” provides the root of our English word, magic. At some point, however, the three magi left behind the way they were practicing their profession and undertook a journey to pursue the truth in a new way—still following a star—but in a new way by seeking the truth as God was revealing it to the magi in a fresh and more vivid way. It was an “epiphany” that certainly must have provided quite a bit of a jolt for the magi, intellectually and humanly speaking. The magi not only had to follow a new pathway to the truth, a journey from looking for the truth in the stars of the heavens to discovering it in the babe lying in a manger in Bethlehem, but St. Matthew reminded us at the conclusion of today’s gospel, they also took that new way home. They were changed men, living in the present—somewhere between “here” and “there”—with all of difficulties, tensions, and suspense characterizing this terrain. They had not idea what would unfold when they arrived home, but their epiphany made it possible for the magi to experience peace and joy as the suspense unfolded. True religion challenges us not to live in fear of hell but to recognize in a fresh and more vivid way God’s presence in our lives so that, by grasping hold God’s hand and trusting in God’s providence or, as Alfred Hitchcock said, hanging on just to the prayer to get through that suspense, or, as the magi discovered by embracing a new pathway and allowing the suspense to play out, we begin to live true religion. This is how true religion makes it possible not to live in fear of the torments of hell or the fear and spinning around and around in the darkness of those magistrate’s cells in which we have placed ourselves, but to enjoy the peace and joy of God’s kingdom which, St. Paul says, “is beyond all human understanding.”
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HOMILY
