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FIFTH  SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY.   The connection of the Sunday with the Epiphany season is not made so clear in the Gospel of the Tares and the Wheat, as in that of those the Gospels of which record the Manifestation of the glory of Christ in His acts.  Yet it reveals Him as the Lord of the Church for its government as well as for its preservation; and shows that even when He seems to be suffering evil that might be prevented, His purpose is still full of love for His own, lest the wheat should be injured by the destruction of the tares.  And as, moreover, our Lord Himself has explained that the seed is the WORD of God, that is, His own Person, this Gospel and Sunday must be regarded as setting forth the glory of Christ in the increase of His Church, and the development of that Kingdom on earth which is to form so large a portion of the eternal dominion of the King of kings.  It shows also the ultimate triumph of the WORD in the face of all opposition.  Men may sleep who should have guarded the field, and the enemy may seem to have gained an advantage by which the glory of the WORD is dimmed; but God waits His time, and when that is fulfilled sends forth His servants to undo the work of the Evil One; so that the glory of the Redeemer is manifested by the gathering in of a large harvest of the redeemed into His heavenly garner.

The Epistle for this Sunday takes up the course of St. Paul's Epistles from the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity, and both Gospel and Epistle have a relation to the season of Advent, because they used frequently to be required to complete that of Trinity.