Lights a Lovely Mile

A Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord 2025

The Priest-Poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, in his poem: “My Own Heart Let Me More Have Pity On,” attempts to express the unbidden, unforeseen, unexpectedness of God’s light. Near the conclusion of the poem he writes:

“…leave comfort root-room; let joy size/at God knows when to God knows what; whose smile’s/not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies/Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.”

We are reminded this Epiphany Sunday that the light shines in the darkness; the Light, that is Christ, shines in the most unexpected places on the most unexpected people. With this in mind, I find myself wondering if perhaps it is not loss that lights the lovely mile we all must walk?

I believe the Christmas star was a symbol of something the Magi lost. Personal losses they had each suffered, as well as the deep unknown loss that lit their longing to seek, the desire to journey. That star of loss, so necessary for finding, lit their path and as they walked their hearts grew enlightened as that particular weight, the weight of death, which weighed them down, became a burden that was light. So much so that when they came upon a dirty stable and a young, impoverished family, in that dark they saw the Light that would save their lives.

So perhaps it is loss that lights the lovely mile we all must walk. As I grow older I keep losing people. I haven’t misplaced them, they simply insist on dying. And I’ve been tempted to wonder: Is this what life becomes — a long slog in the dark burdened by the weight of the dead? But I’m beginning to see how the losses, the ones’ we lose, are what lights the Christmas star of our own lives… the losses light the lovely mile of the life we have yet to live.

The dead become stars. I don’t mean they become ephemeral realities that get disseminated throughout the ether… that is not Christianity! We know the dead live and they now live free of the limits that sometimes shaded the light they bore on this earth. Now they are free to contain the uncontainable Fire, the sum of Light, and their deepest desire for us is that they might shed that light upon our own dark paths… their desire is to Light the Lovely Mile we still must walk.

Death does not darken the path we walk. Rather it is death that makes room for the light.

Take a moment and recall the names of the people you have loved and lost. They are your Christmas stars now. Not distant, cold, aloof, glimmering, disconnected celestial entities, but living, loving, leaning-towards-us people who now have the power, in Christ, to light the lovely mile that lies ahead of each of us. So that our eyes may be opened to seeing in the dark, seeing in the poverty of our own lives, the one Light that saves our souls.

As we grow older it is not the dreams and the plans, the aspirations and the achievements that light our way. That light is, by its nature, limited and quickly fades as it once so brightly shone. Instead, it is loss that lights the lovely mile we still must walk. Loss that enlightens the Love that transcends the limitations that might tempt us to lose hope.

When the Magi left Bethlehem they knew not to return to Herod. They knew not to submit the Light to the lunacy of human power, but rather they discovered they must now take a different route. What they had lost lit the way for a Love to be revealed that would set them on a different road, the only road that would lead them home.

It’s loss that lights the lovely mile we all still must walk. And loss that lights the “different route” we must now take, the only route that can lead us home.