In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen  We continue this Christmastide after the Epiphany as we continue to reflect upon the great gift we have received and being renewed in our love and our devotion to our Savior Jesus Christ, that the Child in the manger is truly a light for us and for the world.
As the Gospel so beautifully reminds us, the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, that Jesus is our light, and yesterday that light was made known to the world with the adoration of the Magi, and that that light enters our life through Baptism and through our daily following of Jesus Christ and uniting ourselves to Him, that He brings us His divine light and His divine life, and that we want to bring His light to the world and to carry this light wherever we may go.
Today's Gospel also shows how Jesus did not waste any time in His mission. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” that He began to preach the call to conversion, and that it's just a reminder for us that we have a call to daily conversion, that each day is a new day for me to begin again to more perfectly love God, to more perfectly follow Christ, and to more perfectly serve God, and that my desire is to avoid anything which would offend God, that continual call to repentance in my daily life by each day striving to make steps to grow in perfection and virtue, and to detach myself from sin, to detach myself from sin.
I thought it was very important in yesterday's Gospel that the Gospel included the passage that the kings were not to return to Herod, reminding us that we should avoid any bad influences, and Herod of course not only stands for the one who wanted to seek out the death of Christ, and those who hate Christ, but any bad influence that could lead us away from Christ and kill the life of Christ in our soul, that we want to avoid anything that could destroy that divine life of God in our soul.
And so today we also honor St. John Neumann, who was the Bishop of Philadelphia. St. John Neumann originally came from Bohemia. He became a Redemptorist here in the United States, and was eventually made the Bishop of Philadelphia, and died in, I believe it was 18—about 1860 he died. But he dedicated himself in establishing new parishes and establishing schools.
I was privileged once to visit his shrine in Philadelphia. His body is there at the shrine. He was a very short man. He was not very tall, but stature means nothing before God. He had great love, great dedication, and great zeal in serving Christ.
And so we can ask him today as we begin this new year, to assist us that we have the same renewed dedication and zeal that he had in loving and serving our Savior Jesus Christ with the time that we have left.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.