An epiphany is defined as a sudden moment of insight or realization – when something that was confusing or hidden suddenly becomes clear. I have a friend from my NYSE days who was a senior warden at a church on the Upper East Side. As I have reported here before, I love to stop into the churches of New York City. So, years ago I asked my friend to give me a tour of his church on York Avenue, The Church of the Epiphany. It’s an Episcopalian church, and if you didn’t know a senior warden is kind of like the chairman of the board of a nonprofit organization. At the time I did the tour, the church on the corner of York Avenue needed repair. It was designed in a Norman style, one of the few to lay that claim in New York City.
My friend was able to negotiate a sale of the church to Weill-Cornell and move the church and congregation west a few blocks to a Presbyterian church that had fallen on hard times. That church was named after Jan Hus, a Czech priest from the 1400s. The neighborhood, at one time, included a large Czech, Bohemian, and Hungarian population.
Epiphany was able to make the sale to Weill-Cornell, buy out Jan Hus, thus saving their congregation, enabling them to move to a new location, and enlarge their own congregation with the larger, updated facility on 74th Street. It was one of those rare real estate deals where everyone won.
I recently had a tour of the new church and was blown away by its beauty. The facility houses a school; a cafeteria, where they host congregants and others for weekly meals; a beautiful nave with a new pipe organ imported from Utah and a rooftop. I got to meet both the rector and associate rector on this insiders’ tour and discovered that the stained-glass windows were redone, including one that depicts COVID days. I learned that during the renovations they experienced fires, floods, and COVID and still managed to finish the job. I saw the fourteenth century baptismal fountain from France that was used to baptize my friends’ sons. And I learned that Episcopalian services are fully open and that they host services with Jewish, Catholic and Protestant congregations. The rector explained that the church was much darker before the renovations and that they had opened it up to be more light filled. He said that the feeling he gets when he enters is – hope. And I thought how appropriate that word was for this church.
The Epiphany is also the feast day of the three kings, the Magi, the wisemen who followed the star to the birthplace of Jesus. It represents a “revealing” if you will, of the Light of the World, a revelation that is available to all. The rector showed me the new marble tile emblem at the foot of the altar. The symbology was interesting: there is depicted the three crowns representing the three kings and then 14 stars in a circle around them. The 14 stars represent the 14 generations between Abraham and Jesus. I had no idea that there were 14 generations between.
I mentioned to the rector that he had a lot of competition, as there was another church on the same block, and probably at least three others in a four-block radius. He laughed and said there was no competition, they all work together. Being a born and bred New Yorker, I cynically said that most people think that all New Yorkers were atheists. Again, he gently corrected me, saying that he found New Yorkers to be very focused on their faith. As I looked around, I thought how right the word “hope” was to describe this place. As I descended the stairs to leave, I realized I too had had an epiphany, one of hope and light.
