Tuesday after Epiphany
6 January 2026
Recognizing Love That Transforms
The prayer we offered at the beginning of Mass gives us the key to this morning's celebration. We asked the Father that we might be:
“inwardly transformed through him whom we
recognize as outwardly like ourselves.”
That single line captures the heart of Epiphany
and the mystery of the Incarnation.
God has appeared in our flesh.
Not in disguise.
Not in pretense.
But truly, fully, and vulnerably.
And the question Epiphany places before us
is not simply whether we recognize Jesus
but whether we allow that recognition to change us from within.
Saint John helps us understand what that transformation looks like.
He does not begin with commandments or effort.
He begins with identity:
“Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God.”
For John, love is not a sentiment or a feeling.
It is not something we generate.
Love originates in God Himself.
And the proof of that love is not found in how we feel,
but in what God has done:
“In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.”
God’s love is revealed
—made visible, concrete, and unmistakable—
not as an idea,
but as a person.
Love takes flesh.
Love steps into the world.
Love comes close enough to be seen, touched, and even rejected.
And that love is not a response to our goodness.
“Not that we have loved God,
but that he loved us.”
Transformation begins there.
Before we act,
before we change,
before we love,
God loved us first.
That truth comes alive in the Gospel.
Jesus looks out at the crowd
and sees people who are tired, hungry, and scattered
—“like sheep without a shepherd.”
His first response is not to teach them discipline
or send them away.
He doesn’t say, “They have to learn to do for themselves.”
His response is compassion.
He is moved from within.
That detail matters.
The compassion of Jesus is not distant sympathy.
It is the compassion of God in the flesh.
God sees human need and responds
not from heaven,
but from among us.
The miracle that follows flows directly from that compassion. Jesus feeds the crowd
not with abundance that appears from nowhere,
but with what is already present:
five loaves and two fish.
Ordinary food.
Ordinary hands.
Offered, blessed, broken, and shared.
This is Incarnation in action.
God does not bypass human reality.
He works through it.
He takes what is small, insufficient, and fragile
and makes it life-giving.
And notice something else.
Jesus involves the disciples.
He does not do everything Himself.
He asks them to bring what they have.
He lets them distribute the food.
The miracle unfolds through their participation.
That is what inward transformation looks like.
The Collect asks that we be transformed
through Him whom we recognize as outwardly like ourselves. Jesus looks like us
so that we might begin to live like Him.
The love revealed in Christ
is meant to take shape in His Body, the Church.
John makes that connection clear.
If God’s love has been revealed to us in this way,
then love must now be revealed through us.
Not perfectly.
Not all at once.
But truly.
Epiphany is not only about seeing Christ.
It is about allowing His life to reshape ours.
The world recognizes strength in power.
God reveals strength in compassion.
The world expects abundance to come from excess.
God brings abundance through sharing.
The world believes love must be earned.
God loves first.
As we continue this Epiphany season,
the Church invites us to ask an honest question:
If God has appeared in our flesh,
where is that love appearing in our lives?
In our patience.
In our generosity.
In our willingness to give what we have,
even when it feels small.
In our willingness to help and share,
without considering whether they are worthy or not.
Because when we recognize Christ as outwardly like ourselves, something remarkable begins to happen.
We are slowly, quietly, and truly transformed from within.
And love, once revealed, continues to reveal God to the world.