On Epiphany - From NLM

There is a most fascinating article on the Feast of a Epiphany over at New Liturgical Movement

I had never really understood the point of the feast, nor appreciated its erstwhile significance in the liturgical year.

"The Epiphany of Our Lord is the central feast of the Incarnation cycle, which runs from the First Sunday of Advent to Candlemas. Epiphany is not the end, but the apex of this cycle; it brings to full fruition the expectation of Advent’s “Veni, Domine.” Epiphany fulfills Christmas; Our Lord was born in the stillness of the night and manifested His birth only to a few; the Epiphany recounts Our Lord manifesting Himself, human and divine, to the whole world, from which point, His salvific mission begins.

Epiphany brings to fruition the gradual unfolding of the manifestation of Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, as God made man. The word Epiphany itself is a Greek word meaning “manifestation”; the Eastern Churches call the feast Theophany, meaning the manifestation or appearance of God. St. Paul writes to Titus (2, 11) in a passage often repeated during this season, “The grace of the saving God has appeared (‘epephane’ in Greek) to all men.” At His Nativity, the Word made flesh is manifested to the Holy Family, to shepherds, to lowly beasts of burden. At His Circumcision on the eighth day, the Word Incarnate is given the name Jesus in the temple, and He sheds His first drops of blood for our redemption. And now, He is fully revealed to the world in three ways which this feast of Epiphany celebrates simultaneously: His adoration by pagan wise men from the East; His baptism in the Jordan, at which His divinity and the Triune God are revealed, and the mission of St John the Baptist, which dominated the liturgy in Advent, is fulfilled; and His first miracle, the changing of water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana.

As such, Epiphany is one of the four principle feasts of the year, along with Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, traditionally preceded by a privileged and special vigil. (By vigil, we refer to an entire day of preparation before a major feast, not a Mass of the feast itself anticipated the evening before.) Considering the importance of the feast, it is a very strange and unfortunate phenomenon that its ancient vigil, along with its highly privileged octave, was suppressed in 1955, along with many other things."

I love posts like this. Hopefully this knowledge will not just be so much 'tinsel and trivia, but one day, Deo volente, may lead to the restoration of the Roman Rite.