THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD
5 JANUARY 2020
When
the Magi studied the heavenly bodies, they presumed that they would find the
newborn king of the Jews in the capital city, Jerusalem. Instead, they encountered the current king of
the Jews Herod was wealthy, powerful,
and corrupt, and terribly insecure, eliminating his own children whom he
thought were plotting to take his place.
King Herod consulted the chief priests and scribes, who knew the
Scriptures and directed the pagan Magi to Bethlehem. Ironically, those who should have heeded the
Scriptures did not care. Those who did
not know the divine Revelation desired to pay homage to the newborn king. Having followed the star to Bethlehem, they found
the new born king born into poverty in a stable and vulnerable. They prostrated themselves and presented
gifts: gold for a king, frankincense for
God, and myrrh.
Myrrh was
used to prepare bodies for burial in the ancient world. The gift of myrrh given to the child Jesus reminds
us that he was born to die some 33 years later outside Jerusalem, a few miles
from Bethlehem. This gift helps us to understand
that birth and death are two sides of the same coin. That was my experience at both of my parents’
deaths. Though painful in dying, they
were being born into eternity. T.S.
Eliot wrote a beautiful poem, The Journey
of the Magi to emphasize this connection.
Now an old man, one of the Magi, reflects on his journey:
…This: were we led all that way for
Birth or
Death? There was a Birth, certainly.
We had
evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth
and death,
But had thought
they were different; this Birth was
Hard and
bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned
to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no
longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an
alien people clutching their gods.
I should be
glad of another death.
The Magi had been profoundly changed by their encounter with
Christ. That is why they went home by
another way. Once home, they were no
longer comfortable with their pagan gods and old ways of doing things. They had to die to the old dispensation to
live with this Mystery.
That dying
is at the heart of our Catholic faith.
In her Magnificat, Mary proclaims that God has cast down the mighty from
their thrones with the birth of her son.
That is why Herod was threatened by this birth. Throughout his public ministry, Jesus
insisted over and over again that his disciples must die to themselves to rise
with him. He demonstrated that truth by
entering death itself. That truth
enables us to learn to die to ourselves and our selfish ways and to see our own
deaths in the light of faith. When we
die, we can be reborn into eternity.
We are
grateful for the faith of the Magi.
Through their human eyes, they see much more than an ordinary child born
in Bethlehem. They fall down and worship
God in human flesh. They invite us to do
the same. We see with our human eyes
ordinary bread and ordinary wine. But
with eyes of faith, we know them to be the Body and Blood of the Lord. Instead of bringing him gifts of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh, we can bring him great “spiritual gifts, more sublime
than those which can be seen with eyes”.
(Gregory Nazianzen) Today’s feast
invites us to bury all of our old ways of sinfulness. We can let go of our past mistakes. We can forgive others and ourselves. We can rise, like the daystar rising in the
east. We can have the courage to trust that when we die to those old ways, we
can rise to being born as more intentional disciples, changed by our
celebration of the Christmas Mystery.
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