Thanks to the much-maligned decision to transfer the celebration of the Solemnity of the Epiphany to a Sunday many people don’t realize that today, Jan. 6 is the actual date of the great feast.  Then again, many people don’t even realize that it is indeed the Christmas season, so there’s plenty of re-education to go around.  All that crotchety-ness aside, I thought a quote from Dom Gueranger’s The Liturgical Year would be in order:

The Magi, the first-fruits of the Gentile world, have been admitted into the court of the great King whom they have been seeking, and we have followed them.  The Child has smiled upon us, as he did upon them.  All the fatigues of the long journey which man must take to reach his God – all are over and forgotten; our Emmanuel is with us, and we are with him.  Bethlehem has received us, and we will not leave her again:  for in Bethlehem we have the Child and Mary his Mother.  Where else could we find riches like these that Bethlehem gives us?  Oh! let us beseech this incomparable Mother to give us this Child of hers, for he is our light, and our love, and our Bread of life, now that we are about to approach the Altar, led by the Star of our faith.  Let us at once open our treasures; let us prepare our gold, our frankincense, and our myrrh, for the sweet Babe, our King.  He will be pleased with our gifts, and we know he never suffers himself to be outdone in generosity.  When we have to return to our duties, we will, like the Magi, leave our hearts with our Jesus; and it shall be by another way, by a new manner of life, that we will finish our sojourn in this country of our exile, looking forward to that hapy day when life and light eternal will come and absorb into themselves the shadows of vanity and time which now hang over us.