St. Paul writes in today's Epistle about the gifts of God that He shares with us by His grace, naming prophecy, faith, ministry, teaching, exhortation and caring for one another in brotherly love. In the middle of the Epistle are the words: “Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good,” and at the very end: “Mind not high things but condescend to men of low estate.”

On Epiphany, according to the tradition of the Church, three events in the life of Christ are remembered: the arriving of the Magi from the Orient to worship the Christ Child, the baptism of Jesus, and Christ’s first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana.

These three moments are not just brief stops on the earthly path of Jesus, they are events of enormous importance for the redemption of mankind.

When we look at the genealogy of Jesus, we see many people there who are described in the Old Testament as having done a lot of evil and were extremely sinful. Jesus’ opponents also accused Him of being a sinner – or at least of eating and drinking with sinners. In the Gospel of John, they even hinted that Jesus was born “of fornication”.

When John the Baptist was asked who he was, he answered with the words of the prophet Isaiah: „I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.“ This expression – „the voice of one crying in the wilderness“ – has two almost opposite meanings. On the one hand, it indicates someone who is, as it were, in a completely hopeless situation. Either he is lost and cannot find the way to where he wants to go, and there is no one there to help him and show him the way, or he himself tries to lead the lost in the right direction, but no one listens to him.

Often, other people and even God are seen as stopgaps: we pay attention to them when we need them, and we act as if they exist only to benefit us. In a sense, this is natural: without God we would not exist, and without other people it would be difficult – if not completely impossible – for us to live. Even St. Augustine says: “For when I seek Thee, my God, I seek a happy life. I will seek Thee, that my soul may live. For my body lives by my soul; and my soul by Thee" and "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it rests in Thee".