This is, as you know, Epiphany. It's the end of the Christmas season in the Church. And I'd like to start out with you today with two quick definitions. The first is "Epiphany." And the second is "Heimlich Maneuver."

Now, "Epiphany" is defined in the dictionary, the one I have, lots of synonyms, but the ones that were highlighted were, "An Epiphany is a recognition or a revelation given to you." You recognize something or something is revealed to you. You really see it for the first time. That's "Epiphany."

For the "Heimlich Maneuver" I live on the property of a doctor and his wife and their kids. And I asked the doctor a couple of days ago, I said, "David, I'm going to say a couple of words and you say the first thing that occurs to you." He's a doctor. So I said, "Heimlich Maneuver." And he paused for a split second and he said, "Lifesaver." I thought, "Yes. That's what I've been thinking many many years now, spiritual Heimlich Maneuvers, Lifesavers!" And I'd like to combine the two things today. If the need for some of us comes about, recognizing a revelation, even though we might have been Catholics since we were little kids, it comes in God's plan by a spiritual jolt, a "Heimlich Maneuver." That's part of God's plan so we can recognize things, maybe for the first time.

Anyhow, I made up about twenty. (I've been a priest a long time!) But, don't worry. I cut it down to ten. And then I cut it down to five. But I'd like to do the next five, the next time we're together.

But the first five, who got an epiphany with a bit of a jolt, with a "Heimlich Maneuver," were the Jews themselves. That's the whole point of today's gospel. And I think the first Jewish converts (And don't forget that it's right in the Bible that many people after Our Lord's Resurrection, many Jewish people became followers, joined the Apostles. Many Jews did.) But it must have been a bit of a "Heimlich Maneuver" spiritually for them to hear this Gospel years later that when Our Lord was a baby, Magi came from the East. They got the point. Magi from the East are like you and me, the goyim, goys, not Jews.... from the East, worshipping, kneeling. "Here's our king." Oh! Not just the Jews! No more.... You were the Chosen People. But, God's plan now: Everybody come in! And it must have been a bit of a jolt, humanly speaking. And we were chosen for so long. God still loves the Jews, but He's invited us in. And that's the point of the story. Bit of a jolt...but an Epiphany!

The second is Alfred Hitchcock. I hope somebody here knows who Alfred Hitchcock is.... or was! My last year of teaching, I said to some of the seniors in college, I referred to Hitchcock, and a couple of the kids said, "Who?" But Hitchcock made a lot of scarey movies, "The Birds" and "Psycho" and dozens of others that are even better, by the way. But he was a Catholic, born, raised, died a Catholic... Hitchcock. And he got an Epiphany when he was only six years old.

He was a Catholic in a neighborhood where he was the only Catholic. He was an only child. His parents were very strict Catholics, loving but strict. And even as a little boy of six, he was very, very pudgy... and timid. And one dusk, around five o'clock, on a very dark foggy London evening, his dad said to this little Alfred Hitchcock, "Alf, here is a note. You take the note around the corner to the magistrate" (the policeman) "and you give the note to the magistrate and he'll read it and then you come home."

And Hitchcock, always obedient, stepped into the London fog and walked, (It was cold and dark.) and he came to the magistrate, the police station, and he walked up to the desk and he handed... (Now Hitchcock told this story several times. It's true, and he told it when he was over eighty. He had just been knighted by the queen. He was eighty years old, talking on a London BBC talk interview.) And when he was six, seventy-four years ago, he remembered, he handed the note to the magistrate and the magistrate opened it and read it and closed it and put it back in the envelope and took Hitchcock by his five pudgy digits and led him down the spiral staircase of the police station to the long corridor where there were the cells. And that particular night all the prison cells were empty. And the magistrate led the little boy into one cell... and closed the cell... and locked the cell...and went back the spiral staircase and turned out all the lights.

And Hitchcock, all those years later, remembered terror and spinning around in his fear. And most Hitchcock movies have a scene of an innocent person in a small space, spinning around. And he pulled out his little six-year-old rosary and he started to say a Hail Mary....and the lights came on! It was only five minutes later, he estimated, but, at the time, he said, "It was five hundred years!" And the policeman came down and opened the cell and took him by his pudgy fingers and brought him up the spiral staircase and ushered him back into the London fog. And he said, "Alf, you go home now. Your father wrote in the note that I was to show you what happens to little boys who grow up to be bad boys."

And the interviewer on the radio (You can even hear his voice sink.) said, "I don't think we'd agree with that method." But Hitchcock said, "You see, I recognize that in so much of our lives, even when we grow up, we have so little control...." (His words, cause I wrote it down. I always have a little pad and I write... "So little control...even when we're grown up...") "...and that, finally, sometimes our last resort is prayer."

Now the BBC British commentator, somewhat superciliously, said, "Oh, well. You were just lucky that you started to pray and the man came and let you out. Most people don't get such fast answers." And Hitchcock paused a long time and he said, "No," he says. "You see, God, in His plan for us, sometimes there is a long suspense." And that, as a lot of you, if not everybody here knows, that takes a lot of courage to get through that suspense, hanging on just to the prayer. For Hitchcock at six, it was an Epiphany and he spent the rest of his life scaring us!

Number three is Thomas Merton. (Here I go dropping names again!) But I did, as a little kid in New York City, I grew up in the parish where Thomas Merton was baptized as an adult convert to the Catholic Church. It's right next to Columbia University where I grew up. And Merton was studying at Columbia. (Some of you know his life.) And he'd go to Corpus Christi, our Church, and take instructions. First-rate mind, Merton, and a first-rate priest who was teaching him, Father Ford. They examined everything! Is there a God? Was Jesus God? Did He rise from the dead? Did He establish a Church? Is it the Catholic Church? And right down the line, intensive study. First-rate brain, Merton. Wouldn't take any baloney. And at the end, he said, "Yes. I have to believe it. It's right there. It's true. But I can't take the final step...." (You know I'm rushing this. It's much longer in the book.) Merton used to drop in to attend Mass, even though he wasn't baptized yet. One morning, when he still couldn't take the step to be baptized, he saw, at a morning Mass, a woman kneeling, looking at the altar. And Merton said, in effect, "I want what she's got." Because her body language and the very unphony but very real attention she was paying to Mass got him! That was his "Heimlich Maneuver." It was gentle but it was body language of a believer. And he knocked on the door and said, "NOW! ... Now baptize me."

The next is a writer, Catholic writer, a woman named Flannery O'Connor. She has written some of the best short stories ever written on Planet Earth. She was a Catholic writer living in the South. She died at 39 of lupus, and most of her life she was on steel crutches. But she was a first-rate writer, Catholic woman living in the South, where there were very few Catholics, where she lived.

Anyhow, she was terrific. And they kept having this committee to vote on the National Book Award. You know, that's the equivalent of getting an Oscar, for a writer. And there were two people on the committee, year after year (I have researched this. It's true.) who kept saying, "Oh, you can't give it to Flannery O'Connor. She's a Catholic. You know, her mind is bound by the Vatican, and you can't...." When she died, she got the Award. I guess they thought it was safe by then.

And she went to this convention of Southern Gothic writers, great American writers, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, that whole bunch of southern writers. Of course, she was the only Catholic in the bunch, and they all respected her cause she had such skill. But they also knew what she was. And they'd been drinking. She had one glass of sherry. And one of them, whom I choose not to identify here, turned to Flannery after a couple of drinks and he said, "Flannery, Honey, you know you might be the best writer in the room." (I think she was.) "But, Flannery Honey, you're Roman Catholic, right?" She's very timid and shy, in life, not behind the typewriter, but in life, she's very shy. She said, "Yes." "Well, Honey, I went to the little Catholic Church right by the hotel. I went to one of your morning masses. And, Honey, I saw the little priest come out and do his little Mass, and I don't think he was terribly intellectual. And he held up the little white wafer of bread and you Catholics, you think it's Jesus. Well, Flannery Honey, with your brains, you must know it's not Jesus. It's a little symbol of Jesus. It's a reminder of Jesus."

And Flannery O'Connor, so quiet and shy, put down her little glass of sherry and looked at him and everyone else in the room and said, "If it's just a symbol, the hell with it! It is not just a symbol. It is the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. He said it was. The Church says it is. I can't explain it. It's a mystery of Faith. And I'm not ashamed to say that it's a fact. And I can't explain it but it's not just a symbol. It is the Real Presence." Now I read a few weeks later that Tennessee Williams in New York City, who had been at the convention, knocked on the door of a church in New York and said, "I want to become a Catholic." And he did! And I've known lots of college students who knocked on doors and said, "I want to learn more about this Catholic Church" because some other college kid had the guts to speak her or his faith. Just simply, "This is what I believe." A "Heimlich Maneuver" that's really been a help to people, not from any priest...from you!

And the last... at last... is my brother who's in recovery from alcohol and drugs. I told you that before. In 1987, he was talking to me about his Catholicism. He said, "When I was a Catholic, I was a good Catholic despite my addictions. I mean I tried to get to Mass and avoid terrible sins..." He said, "Now I've made a distinction." (Now, some of you might know this phrase, but I didn't hear it til 1987.) He said, "Before, my faith was religious. Now, my faith is spiritual." And I, ever the straight man, said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, religious is all in the melon", meaning the head, cerebral, conceptual, "Well, I was brought up a Catholic".... "But now it's in the gut also. So it's spiritual. It goes deeper." By "the gut" he meant "the lifestyle." He said, "I got to hold onto God's hand every day after day to keep my disease in check. I have to need His hand and need His help." It went from the melon to the gut. And then he said, (Now he's still a Catholic.) but he said, "Religion used to be for me because I didn't want to go to hell. Spirituality, holding His hand every day, is for me because I've been to hell and I don't want to go back." Anyhow, "Epiphany" means to recognize or have revealed in a fresh, vivid way, and for some of us, the only way we get it is by a spiritual "Heimlich Maneuver."