A priest recently recalled his trip to Rwanda where he spoke to people about reconciliation. Thirty years ago, from April to June 1994, an unthinkable genocide took place in Rwanda, during which, among other crimes, up to 800,000 people were killed and half a million women were raped. When that priest met and talked with people, he saw two things: on the one hand, how impossible, humanly speaking, it is to find reconciliation in situations like this, and on the other hand, how the amazing grace of God has made it possible despite everything.

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.