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Everyday Ephiphanies
Anthony J. Godzieba
 In
April 1569, José de Acosta—Jesuit priest, missionary, and
one of the sharpest minds of 16th century Europe—found himself on
a ship crossing the equator. He was bound for what he called “the
Indies,” what today we call South America. In fact, he was being
sent by his superiors to Lima, Peru, to teach theology at the college
the Jesuits had established there the previous year. While crossing the
equator, he had a truly shocking experience—so shocking, because
it completely contradicted the greatest of the ancient authorities whom
he had closely studied and on whom he had relied. Here’s his report:
I will describe what happened to me when I passed to the Indies. Having
read what poets and philosophers write of the Torrid Zone, I persuaded
myself that when I came to the equator, I would not be able to endure
the violent heat, but it turned out otherwise. For when I passed [the
Equator], which was when the sun was at its zenith there, having entered
the zodiacal sign of Aries, in March, I felt so cold that I was forced
to go into the sun to warm myself. What could I do then but laugh at Aristotle’s
Meteorology and his philosophy? For in that place and that season, where
everything, by his rules, should have been scorched by the heat, I and
my companions were cold.
What had occurred to Acosta, what blew his world wide open, was a moment
of sudden insight, a lightning-flash of surprising understanding that
profoundly changed him and the way he saw everything—he had an epiphany.
And it happened in a tiny, almost throw-away moment: He felt cold, he
moved into the sunlight. And then he laughed. With that laugh, he would
never be the same. The geography, the history, the studies of climate,
all the ancient authorities in which he had been trained—he could
no longer completely trust any of it. In fact, nothing would ever be the
same again. For with Acosta’s laugh, which echoes along with all
those other thinkers who laughed with surprise and delight and insight
throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, the whole framework of Western
civilization, crafted and passed on from libraries of ancient texts, crumbled,
and knowledge now seemed as wonderfully varied as did the world that these
thinkers were now exploring first-hand.
Those of you familiar with the Confessions know that there is an episode
of similar impact in St. Augustine’s own life. Upon discovering
Cicero’s Hortensius, he experienced an overwhelming epiphany. His
life, his hopes, his passions, his possibilities were completely transformed;
he could no longer be the way he had been. He says, “the book changed
my way of feeling and the character of my prayers to you, O Lord, for
under its influence my petitions and desires were altered. All my hollow
hopes suddenly seemed worthless, and with unbelievable intensity my heart
burned with longing for the immortality that wisdom seemed to promise.
I began to rise up, in order to return to you.”
I want to talk about epiphanies, and the reports of Augustine and José
de Acosta help me illustrate the two points that I want to make today.
Here’s the first: epiphanies accomplish three things: they open
us out beyond ourselves, to others and to history; they drive us deep
within ourselves; and they open us upward beyond ourselves.
Here’s my other point. You’ll notice that the epiphanies that
overtook Augustine and José de Acosta are somewhat similar. Each
one had his usual framework scrambled and was forced to see the world,
his own life, and all the connections from an entirely new standpoint.
But they are also dissimilar, in a very important way. The catalyst for
Augustine’s epiphany was something that he read. For Acosta, it
was something he felt.
I think this difference is crucial, and here’s why. Here at Villanova,
we’re text-crazy. Of course we are, we have to be. That’s
one of the central things the university is about: to read and study texts
that induct us into the great explorations of human experience that have
gone on for century after century. They offer us a searchlight that can
illuminate aspects of our lives that we might never have encountered on
our own, a legacy of discernment and a challenge to transformation that
can help us make sense out of our experiences.
But not all epiphanies start with texts. Experience tells us that we need
to widen our focus.
What we see, what we hear, what we feel—all these can provoke epiphanies,
too, often in ways that can outrun anything that a text can do. Art, architecture,
music can set off fireworks in the brain and in the heart and profoundly
refigure what we think is “normal.” They can offer us a taste
of what is extraordinary, what is transcendent, what is so amazingly not-normal
that the “normal” never looks the same again and we never
are the same again.
Let me show you what I mean.
 The
foundational epiphanies that lifted me beyond the northeast Philly neighborhood
where I grew up and that set me off on an oddly twisting and turning journey
that has brought me here to Villanova, were most often not texts. Rather,
they were things like the copy of Albrecht Dürer’s spectacular
engraving St. Jerome in his Study that I first saw as a fourth grader.
The room depicted there was like a portal into the wonderfully exotic
and mysterious medieval world I grew to love from my history books (I
know the engraving is Renaissance, not medieval, but in fourth grade everything
old was “medieval”). The big table where Jerome sat quietly
glowing (probably translating the Bible into Latin), the heavy-grained
wooden planks and timbers across the ceiling, the light flooding into
the room from the deep-set leaded windows whose low sill was fronted with
a bench and cushions. I would have loved to have had a room like this,
and I wondered “what kind of a world would it be where a room like
this was ‘normal’?” I could do without the lion and
the lamb laying in front of the table there, and you could get rid of
that skull on the windowsill. But the richly contemplative atmosphere
that Dürer had depicted compelled me to imagine an identical space
of my own—a world apart from the normal chaos of our house and from
the prying fingers of my little brothers.
There were things like the architectural glories of historical Philadelphia,
which I first saw on one of those fabled Catholic grade-school bus trips
downtown—Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the Betsy Ross house
with its little souvenir shop. What impressed me most, though, was Elfreth’s
Alley. One block, crammed full of tiny houses built before the Revolutionary
War, an oasis of calm in the midst of a noisy commercial district. It
was so different from my house and my neighborhood. How did this place
get here? How did it stay here, without being bulldozed away? Who had
lived here two centuries ago? How did these people live, all packed into
these tiny homes? On the trip back, the school bus drove down Market Street
and passed what at that time was our most famous skyscraper, the PSFS
Building. It simply took my breath away. That cool, wrap-around glass-and-black-granite
façade… the sleek walls, full of windows, that rose up and
up… the humongous letters on the sign that topped the building.
It was so amazingly tall; it made the vast sky look almost touchable.
Both places set my imagination racing and brushed me with what I can only
call a feeling of transcendence that to this day I associate with urban
architecture. They gave me a glimpse a world that was larger and more
exciting and exotic than my everyday neighborhood experience, although
I didn’t know what to do with that glimpse.
The epiphany that brought these glimpses together, though, came not from
what I saw but from what I heard. The summer before high school my older
cousin gave me a stack of audio magazines that I devoured. I was enthralled
by the components, of course, and constantly tinkered with the list of
my all-time ideal (and absolutely unaffordable) gear. In the back of those
magazines were record reviews. The reviewers seemed to know nothing about
rock and pop, and I couldn’t judge the intensely partisan jazz reviews.
But the classical reviews intrigued me, and I soon learned to crack the
code. The music evoked from the reviewers not only a detailed analysis
and evaluation of each performance but also testimony to an intensity
of feeling that I thought only came from the standard rock that I and
my friends listened to. I decided to find out what this was all about,
so I used the magazine’s helpful list of one hundred “standard
repertoire” items that belonged in every classical collection. Being
a contrarian 13-year-old, though, I started toward the end of the list.
I went out and bought Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished”
Symphony.
[ 1 ] F. Schubert, Symphony no. 8 in B minor (“Unfinished”),
D. 759
Norrington, London Classical Players (EMI)
That’s pretty powerful stuff for a high school freshman. I couldn’t
believe how moved I was by Schubert’s mournful melodies. And the
piece confirmed almost every stereotype I had about classical music, that
it is slow and very, very serious. But for me it was too serious, too
somber, too intense. And to my naive ears the music seemed to wander all
over—I couldn’t figure out how it all hung together, how it
made sense.
So I moved up the list and landed at Mozart.
[ 2 ] W. A. Mozart, Symphony no. 40 in G minor, K. 550
Pinnock, English Concert (DG Archiv)
Now this was something I could understand: the musical events were laid
out in a structure that I could follow, and the tempo was a lot quicker
than the Schubert symphony. More importantly, the piece quickly darted
between a sunny cheerfulness and a melancholia that was as painful as
it was delicious. Those of you who know Mozart know that magical bittersweetness
that seems to permeate almost everything he wrote. But its seriousness
still left me asking: isn’t there any classical music that’s
fast, happy, upbeat all the time? And so I went back to the list. And
I found one person who shattered my expectations and changed my life,
J. S. Bach.
[ 3 ] J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto #2, BWV 1047
Harnoncourt, Concentus Musicus Wien (Teldec)
Late that same summer I bought Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg
Concertos. By Christmas I had almost worn those LPs out. Here was classical
music that not only was upbeat but—even better yet—had a structure
that I could follow easily. I really could figure out where Bach was going.
I was mesmerized by the tunes, the instrumental combinations, the serious
playfulness (or playful seriousness) that broke the stereotype. I couldn’t
get enough, and soon I was reading everything I could get my hands on
to help me better understand these pieces. Was that an oboe I heard, or
was it the oddly-named recorder? I didn’t even know what these instruments
looked like. The harpsichord sounded pretty cool; how did it make those
sounds? I found a copy of the Harvard Dictionary of Music in my high school
library (was I the first person to ever open it?) and looked up everything
I could. I couldn’t read music, and tried to teach myself so that
I could borrow the scores and see what was I hearing. I borrowed books
on Bach and tried to find everything that I could about the Brandenburg
Concertos. I discovered that the autograph manuscript may have been a
job application. I learned about Bach’s provincial background and
common-sense attitudes, the incredibly large and talented Bach clan, Bach’s
various stations of employment as he sought better opportunities for himself
and his rather large family, 18th century German court life, 18th century
German politics, the fact that there wasn’t even a “Germany”
in the 18th century, the creativity and servitude demanded of musicians
in princely employment who were ranked among the household staff (how
could creative inspiration be routinely demanded?).
My favorite became the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, where the flute, violin,
and harpsichord stand out from the small baroque orchestra and contest
for solo space. I was thrilled that I was able to get one of Bach’s
puns in the opening movement, his inventive refusal to let the initial
statement of the main theme end where it should.
[ 4 ] J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto #5, BWV 1050
1. Allegro
Kuijken, La Petite Bande (DHM)
I didn’t just get information on Bach. I stumbled onto information
about myself. In the second movement of the Fifth Brandenburg, Bach has
the intertwining instrumental voices share a languorous melodic phrase
that tore my heart out.
[ 5 ] J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto #5, BWV 1050
2. Affetuoso
I couldn’t figure out why, but I discovered a level of emotion—of
unquenchable longing, even—that I didn’t know I had, and that
I couldn’t even describe to anyone. This movement is a supreme example
of what one musician has described as the heart of baroque art and artifice:
a false tear in one eye, a real tear in the other.4 And then in the last
movement, Bach shifts affective gears yet again, having the solo instruments
and finally the orchestra tumble in after each other with a theme that
dissipates all tears, real and false.
[ 6 ] J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto #5, BWV 1050
3. Allegro
That Christmas, despite the fact that my parents were constantly yelling
at me to turn the stereo down, they went out and bought me more Bach—three
albums, one of which blew my world open even further: Bach’s organ
music.
[ 9 ] J. S. Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
Ton Koopman (Teldec)
No, no, not that—that’s too much of a cliché.
How about this? Take a Dutch folk song, add some notes to smooth out the
melody, then play it as a fugue: that is, have each melodic line or voice
enter one by one, overlapping with the previous one, all the while making
sure the combination fits seamlessly and that the whole is overwhelmingly
more than the sum of the parts.
[ 10 ] J. S. Bach: Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542
Hans Fagius (Bis)
Hearing this fugue played with the power of the organ, I finally began
to be aware of Bach’s teeming imagination—his ability to take
the germ of a musical idea and explore it from every angle, exhausting
its possibilities while at the same time getting it to transcend its original
limitations. I not only understood this as a musical method, I took it
as a pedagogical model that gets one closer to the truth of things, and
I have applied it ever since to my own teaching and scholarship. That
same teeming imagination could take this bass line, as played by the left
hand of the harpsichordist
[ 11 ] J. S. Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Bass line
Michael Behringer (Hänssler)
and fashion thirty variations out of it—not thirty variations of
that bass melody, but 30 different melodies written over the same bass
line and harmonic structure, ranging from playful, almost aggressive exuberance
[ 12 ] J. S. Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variation 1
Bob van Asperen (EMI)
to an achingly passionate cry which profoundly mixes the false tear with
the real tear.
[ 13 ] J. S. Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variation 25
Bob van Asperen (EMI)
Now, all this time I was living the usual northeast Philly adolescent
life: I played wiffle ball and stick ball in the summer, football and
hockey in the winter, went to high school, started dating, played poker
and ate pizza with my friends while listening to the Beatles’ White
Album and the Stones’ Let It Bleed. But at the same time I had changed;
I couldn’t believe any longer that northeast Philly was the navel
of the universe. I was plunged into another world stretching far beyond
my neighborhood, one where visions of 17th and 18th century Europe danced
in my head. That world included Leipzig and Dresden, Paris and London,
the glories of the high Baroque but also the tragic seventeenth-century
wars that had devastated large areas of Germany and that made me ask why
in the midst of such beauty people chose to inflict such violence and
suffering. That world included scholars and their heavily-footnoted articles,
libraries and the intoxicating smell of old books crammed with tantalizing
hints of past and future; and later Rome and Venice, Bernini and Caravaggio,
Gabrieli and Monteverdi, and Bach’s sons. I was plugged into another
world because that world took me there and I discovered that I needed
to be there, and to participate in that world I needed to understand as
much of it as I could—on its terms, not mine; its sound-world and
thought patterns, not mine; its view of “normal”, not mine.
And that itself constitutes an epiphany, one of historical consciousness
and difference: one that teaches that the past is different from the present,
that the present is not absolute, that there is no “have to”
built into the present, that things can change and that the future will
be different, and perhaps even better, than the present.
The epiphanies I have had as a result of my encounter with Bach are easy
to pinpoint, and I would not be a scholar and teacher today without them.
Early on my limited world was opened out beyond itself to a world and
to a history and to a way of thinking and imagining that showed me new
possibilities that I truly hungered after. And I was driven deep within
myself to discover desires and emotions that astonished me with their
power. The catalyst for these was a flood of music, both trivial and transcendental,
that awakened in me a thirst for knowledge and experience that I almost
had no right to expect.
 What
about the third effect of an epiphany, that of opening us upward beyond
ourselves? Bach’s teeming imagination understood music as one way
to concretize the harmonia sacra, the harmony of the universe that was
the creation and gift of God. Bach learned through his Christian faith
that to create and perform music was to participate in the reality of
God’s creative love that binds all reality together. By stretching
one’s talent and materials to their limits, one might be able, in
a moment of grace, to suggest what is beyond those limits. And as a Catholic,
I came to understand what the Lutheran Bach was up to. See, as a believing
Catholic, I’ve been trained to expect the extraordinary within the
ordinary. The Catholic sacramental imagination is set up to discern and
welcome the paradox of transcendence being made available by contingency,
infinity by the finite, divinity by humanity. Limited combinations of
notes and sounds can suggest the transcendent harmony of the universe
which exceeds our conceptual grasp. Voluptuous Baroque art, dripping with
flesh and light, can convince us that embodiment participates in divinity
just as much as thought can. Take a look at Caravaggio’s Supper
at Emmaus and see a performance every bit as moving as Bach’s and
every bit as passionate as Augustine’s desire to “rise up”.
Caravaggio’s meticulous observation of the ordinary utensils of
a meal among friends—a bowl of fruit about to drop into our laps,
delicate sunlight passing through a water pitcher which casts both exquisite
light and shadow on the table cover—all this depicts how the ordinary,
without giving up one bit of its materiality, is revealed to be extraordinary,
just as the disciples recognize the resurrected Jesus in the breaking
of the bread.
Every true epiphany harshly exposes our limits only to have us transcend
them, and with that limit-experience nothing is ever the same again. We
become open to the past, to the hidden depths of our own being, to others,
to the natural world, to God, in startling ways. And all it might take
is a glance at a building or a painting, or three minutes of music on
the radio, or a movie, or an idea—yes, even a text. And then we’re
off on a journey of imagination and reflection that could possibly take
us to the heart of the universe, where divine love dwells, where we discover
that, although it happens to us, it’s not just about us. It’s
about us, and others, and the world, and—if you dare believe it—about
God, all bound up together.
Here at the end I want to speak especially to our new students. While
you are here, I am sure that you will read, see, and hear things that
have been epiphanies for your professors, and I think almost all of them
could tell a richly detailed story why. But the real question is this:
what will be the moments of epiphany for you? How will you be open to
the possibility of an epiphany in your own life? Remember Acosta? Someone
else, someone less open to possibilities would have sailed right over
the equator and said, “Hmm, it’s cold out here. Oh well, whatever.”
But instead he let himself absorb and be absorbed by the immensity of
the moment. As students here at Villanova you will be exposed to an incredible
variety of experiences, texts, sounds, sights. Four years later, will
any of them have changed you? What will you have to do in order to be
aware of those moments of sudden insight? If you leave us after four pleasant
years, get a good job and have nice friends, but look back at your Villanova
years and realize that you were never open to an idea, some music, a poem,
or a thing of beauty that could have changed your life, those of us who
have had those experiences will say to you, “we appreciate your
nice life, but we feel sorry for you because this is all you have to show
for your time here.” When will that moment come that is so transforming
that you will laugh out loud, or burst into tears? No one knows, but I
hope you are ready for it when it does.
Just as I gave the first epiphanic laugh to José de Acosta, let
me give the last laugh to Thomas Merton: Catholic convert, Trappist monk,
priest, writer, social critic, prankster, and mystic. He tells us about
an epiphany he had on a crowded Louisville street corner on the way to
have a monastery pamphlet printed—the kind of trivial monastic chore
that usually drove him to frustration. But that day, both Merton and the
cosmos changed.
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the
shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that
I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could
not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was
like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in
a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. . .
. Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or of my monastic life:
but the conception of “separation from the world” that we
have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion.
...
The sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief
and a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness
could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God I am like
other[s], that I am only a man among others. . . .”
It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is
a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes terrible mistakes:
yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human
race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization
should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a
cosmic sweepstake.
If you are a new member of our Villanova community, I fervently hope that
you have at least one epiphanic laugh during your career here. If you
are an experienced Villanovan, look back and see which epiphanies have
brought you to new relationships and surprising understandings. And for
all of us, I pray for a year of insight that gives us a taste of the transcendence
for which we long.
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