Day of Epiphany

Category: Epiphanies in the Media

Epiphanies in the Media

  • Noah’s Day

    In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. (Genesis 7:11-12, NIV)

    I like to think of today as Noah’s Day. You see, Noah, like many of us, had an epiphany. While we don’t know exactly what Noah’s epiphany was, he had one nonetheless. This epiphany led Noah to truly believe in the Lord and that the Lord was speaking to him. The Lord told him to do some crazy things, right? I mean, who would build an ark the size of a football stadium because they thought God told them to? Noah, that’s who.

    The Bible doesn’t offer much about Noah before he built his ark, but what the story of Noah does tell us is to believe and follow what God commands us to do. I like to think of today as Noah’s Day because we should celebrate the faith that Noah had in the Lord. Noah believed God when He said, “I am going to put an end to all people.” (Genesis 6:13, NIV) Noah feared his Lord, and it was this fear that led Noah to act in such an extraordinary way. But the Lord also made a promise to Noah, a covenant with him. Despite this fear of destruction, God promised Noah that he and all who followed him into the ark would be “kept alive.” (Genesis 6:20, NIV)

    So, on February 17, Noah saved so much and all that dwelled on land. Thank God for Noah and Noah’s epiphany.

    Last night, I watched “The Poseidon Adventure,” a movie with many underlying yet not-so-hidden Christian themes. Watching it, with its boat theme, reminded me that I needed to finish this blog post. The preacher in the film, much like Noah, had an epiphany. Many people aboard the ship thought he was crazy for trying to climb up (which was actually down since the ship was upside down) to reach the bottom of the ship. There were those who faithfully followed, but there were also those who reluctantly followed, thinking he was still crazy. And then there were those who simply stayed behind, unable to believe in the preacher’s vision.

    What about the people that Noah left behind? Did they just think he was crazy, or did they believe that there was nothing they could do and only God could save them?

    The preacher in “The Poseidon Adventure” believed that God would save them, but he also believed it was through the acts that God told them to do, through those epiphanies, like Noah’s. Let’s take a moment today to celebrate Noah’s unwavering faith and courage to follow God’s commands, even when they seemed impossible. And let us reflect on our own epiphanies and the steps we are willing to take in faith.

  • Absolute Unshakable Faith

    I just finished watching the first episode of the Martin Scorsese documentary series “The Saints,” which features the story of Joan of Arc. In a world where faith is often questioned, the story of Joan of Arc stands as a beacon of unwavering belief. For those of you who don’t know the story of Joan, she was a young peasant girl born in 1412 in Domrémy, France. Despite being a young peasant girl in medieval France, Joan’s divine visions propelled her onto the grand stage of history. At the age of 13, she began to hear voices, which she believed were sent by God. These voices, which she attributed to Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret, urged her to support Charles VII and help liberate France from English domination during the Hundred Years’ War.

    You see, Joan is the perfect example of someone who had an epiphany from God. She truly believed that God was delivering a message to her. In her moments of solitude, Joan heard the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret. They revealed God’s will to her—she was to save France and ensure Charles VII’s coronation. Despite her young age and lack of military experience, she displayed incredible conviction and courage in following these divine commands.

    Was she truly hearing the angels, or was she crazy as they originally thought? Even when her own countrymen doubted her and the English labeled her a heretic, Joan’s faith never wavered. Today, if someone did the outrageous things that Joan did and faithfully stuck to their claim that God was telling them to do these things, how would we treat them? We clearly would not accept them just as Fr. James Martin says in the commentary at the end of the episode.

    Joan was ultimately burned at the stake as a heretic. It wasn’t until 1920, nearly 500 years later, that she was canonized as a saint. What would we do today to someone who truly believed like Joan, who had an epiphany like Joan, who stuck to their guns no matter what? If someone today claimed to hear divine voices urging them to a seemingly impossible mission, would we have the faith to believe in them as Joan believed in herself? I would like to think I could. I may not be able to live exactly as Christ did, but I hope that I could have the kind of faith she had, and when I die, people will say I had faith like Joan. As Martin Scorsese described it, “At the heart of absolutely everything… Is her faith. Her absolute, unshakable faith.”

    Joan of Arc’s story reminds us that true faith can move mountains, and in her words, “I am not afraid, I was born to do this.”