We celebrated last Sunday the feast of Epiphany. Contrary to what many Catholics and other Christians believe, the feast of Epiphany has less to do with the Three Kings who came and visited the Christ child after a long search. Rather it has more to do with God’s manifestation to all of mankind represented by the Magi (who may not be Kings nor were they three in number). It is more concerned with God’s revelation and response to the question at that time whether He came only for the Jews, the chosen people of the Old Testament, or for everyone including you and me.
The timeliness of this feast and its meaning struck me because of a book that was given to me also last Sunday by my youngest daughter Dani Mae who had just read it. The book is “The Shack” by William P. Young, a book that is described by some as a Christian novel.
You see, the book is actually about God’s epiphany, God’s manifestation and revelation to Mack, the main protagonist in the story. God’s epiphany to Mack, however, is in reality a response to Mack’s prior quest for answers and his search for meaning. Just like the Magi who went on a journey to resolve the question whether the baby born of a virgin in a manger was the true savior.
The story’s plot is simple. Mack comes from a traditional hard-working Irish-American family that had settled somewhere in the Midwest where he was born. His father is an odd combination of an externally religious church-elder and a closet alcoholic who beats his wife and children when drunk. The regular beatings the young Mack get from his father drove Mack to leave home at the early age of 13 but not before he caused the death of his father by poisoning his drinks. He roamed the world and ended up studying Philosophy and Theology in a seminary. He apparently left the seminary before ordination to the ministry, went back to the States and married a wonderful woman named Nan. The union produced five children, of whom, at the time of the story, only three were left with him and Nan. The older two have finished college and were either working or in graduate school. Of the three left, two are teenagers while the last one, Missy, a latecomer, is only 6 years old. Mack’s ordinary life took a tragic turn when Missy mysteriously disappeared while she was with Mack and her two younger siblings in a summer camp. The search for Missy ended in what they call “the shack” where traces of evidence pointing to Missy’s death were present, but not her body. Missy’s disappearance triggered what Mack describes a “The Great Sadness” in his life that went on for three years, until he received an invitation from God to go to “the shack” through a note that he found in his mailbox. He accepted the invitation and for a weekend Mack had the rare chance to meet God face to face. What happened during that weekend comprises the bulk of the book.
We are told that the main author (Young) wrote this book only for his children and was not meant initially for publication. Encouraged by those who had read it first, Young and his friends re-wrote it and even established a private publishing company after the story was rejected by the big publishers. The result? It has stayed in the New York Times’ bestseller list for quite some time now. It has also spawned some kind of a controversy among Christians and non-Christians alike. “Sola scriptura” conservatives criticize it as deviating widely from orthodoxy, while others hail it as “phenomenal”, “life-changing”, and even describe it as having “the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ did for his”.
I must confess that I do not understand what the big fuss is all about. The theme of God manifesting himself to man has been depicted in a lot of cinematic and literary vehicles in the past most recent of which are “Evan the Almighty” and “Bruce Almighty”. The Bible itself is filled with stories of God appearing to man in various forms in order to deliver a message or to answer a question. Thus, I read the book at first mainly because I wanted to be able to answer Dani Mae’s questions. But a funny thing happened to me after reading the book a second time. I realized then that the book’s message was also meant for me after all. Mostly to affirm what I personally believe in -- God’s willingness to talk to us and the universal human desire to experience God’s embrace and to hear God tell us of His fondness for each one of us; the Fatherhood of God and his unconditional love for all of us; the absence of true fathering and its impact on our children; the healing effect of forgiving and being forgiven; and the importance of being over doing. I believe too that God’s epiphany goes on in our lives. But we have to open our eyes to see. Like the Magi, we must remember that our God is always the God of surprises as He was on that first Christmas scene where the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes is a King and the Mother is a virgin.
A final note. I am still not sure whether this has anything to do with God’s epiphany or not. But as the year 2009 began last Thursday, I woke up without pain for the first time after three months of suffering from my spinal stenosis (my version of Macks’s “The Great Sadness”). Then on Sunday, on the feast of Epiphany, I walked to church for mass without my cane !
The timeliness of this feast and its meaning struck me because of a book that was given to me also last Sunday by my youngest daughter Dani Mae who had just read it. The book is “The Shack” by William P. Young, a book that is described by some as a Christian novel.
You see, the book is actually about God’s epiphany, God’s manifestation and revelation to Mack, the main protagonist in the story. God’s epiphany to Mack, however, is in reality a response to Mack’s prior quest for answers and his search for meaning. Just like the Magi who went on a journey to resolve the question whether the baby born of a virgin in a manger was the true savior.
The story’s plot is simple. Mack comes from a traditional hard-working Irish-American family that had settled somewhere in the Midwest where he was born. His father is an odd combination of an externally religious church-elder and a closet alcoholic who beats his wife and children when drunk. The regular beatings the young Mack get from his father drove Mack to leave home at the early age of 13 but not before he caused the death of his father by poisoning his drinks. He roamed the world and ended up studying Philosophy and Theology in a seminary. He apparently left the seminary before ordination to the ministry, went back to the States and married a wonderful woman named Nan. The union produced five children, of whom, at the time of the story, only three were left with him and Nan. The older two have finished college and were either working or in graduate school. Of the three left, two are teenagers while the last one, Missy, a latecomer, is only 6 years old. Mack’s ordinary life took a tragic turn when Missy mysteriously disappeared while she was with Mack and her two younger siblings in a summer camp. The search for Missy ended in what they call “the shack” where traces of evidence pointing to Missy’s death were present, but not her body. Missy’s disappearance triggered what Mack describes a “The Great Sadness” in his life that went on for three years, until he received an invitation from God to go to “the shack” through a note that he found in his mailbox. He accepted the invitation and for a weekend Mack had the rare chance to meet God face to face. What happened during that weekend comprises the bulk of the book.
We are told that the main author (Young) wrote this book only for his children and was not meant initially for publication. Encouraged by those who had read it first, Young and his friends re-wrote it and even established a private publishing company after the story was rejected by the big publishers. The result? It has stayed in the New York Times’ bestseller list for quite some time now. It has also spawned some kind of a controversy among Christians and non-Christians alike. “Sola scriptura” conservatives criticize it as deviating widely from orthodoxy, while others hail it as “phenomenal”, “life-changing”, and even describe it as having “the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ did for his”.
I must confess that I do not understand what the big fuss is all about. The theme of God manifesting himself to man has been depicted in a lot of cinematic and literary vehicles in the past most recent of which are “Evan the Almighty” and “Bruce Almighty”. The Bible itself is filled with stories of God appearing to man in various forms in order to deliver a message or to answer a question. Thus, I read the book at first mainly because I wanted to be able to answer Dani Mae’s questions. But a funny thing happened to me after reading the book a second time. I realized then that the book’s message was also meant for me after all. Mostly to affirm what I personally believe in -- God’s willingness to talk to us and the universal human desire to experience God’s embrace and to hear God tell us of His fondness for each one of us; the Fatherhood of God and his unconditional love for all of us; the absence of true fathering and its impact on our children; the healing effect of forgiving and being forgiven; and the importance of being over doing. I believe too that God’s epiphany goes on in our lives. But we have to open our eyes to see. Like the Magi, we must remember that our God is always the God of surprises as He was on that first Christmas scene where the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes is a King and the Mother is a virgin.
A final note. I am still not sure whether this has anything to do with God’s epiphany or not. But as the year 2009 began last Thursday, I woke up without pain for the first time after three months of suffering from my spinal stenosis (my version of Macks’s “The Great Sadness”). Then on Sunday, on the feast of Epiphany, I walked to church for mass without my cane !
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