Category: Adoration

Homily for the Epiphany: We are the Magi of today.

Adoration of the Magi by Pietro Perugino

Audio Recording:

Text:

The relationship between Christmas and today’s Feast of the Epiphany is complicated, but despite the appearance of wise men in many nativity plays, it is important not to fall into the trap of thinking that it is simply an extension of the Christmas story. In fact, in a very important way, Christmas and the Epiphany can be seen as opposites to one another:

Christmas emphasises the humanity taken on by the divine godhead in coming into the world. What could be more human than the tiny, helpless babe of Christmas night? Epiphany on the other hand reveals the divine nature of that child and the man he grew up to be. Adoration, sacrifice, miracles – these are things associated with God, not a human person. Even the word Epiphany means a revealing or an appearing. Today we are seeing the Christ-child in a new light. Christmas showed us the human baby Jesus, Epiphany unveils the Son of the God, the second person of the Trinity.

The readings today put the emphasis very much on the Magi who came to Bethlehem, but Sacred Tradition gives us three revelations to consider: The Magi, certainly; but also the Wedding at Cana, where Jesus revealed his divine power through the miracle of water being turned into wine; and the Baptism of the Lord, at which the three parts of the Trinity are revealed together.

At 12 noon: If you pay particular attention to the words of the first two verses of our offertory hymn you will see the emphasis placed on these three events.

But as today’s liturgy focuses on the revelation offered by the Magi, let us see what we can discern about them. The short answer to ‘what can a group of two thousand year old astronomers teach us about the Christian life?’ is simply ‘everything.’ But perhaps we should dig a little deeper into two aspects of this mystery.

One of the running themes through our readings is that of light: The first reading is a great prophecy of Isaiah: Arise, shine out, Jerusalem, for your light has come. The Gospel tells of the famous star that filled the Magi with delight. This light is a symbol of divinity, and it leads the Magi, eventually, to the humblest of circumstances. When they arrive and go into the place where the child is, we get none of the displays of knowledge or the talkativeness that they displayed back in Jerusalem. They know that they are in the presence of the divinity that the star was leading them to. They simply and silently fall to their knees, and worship him, and make an offering to him.

The second running theme is that of the revelation to the nations. These men were not Jews, yet they recognised the divine when they saw it and took news of what they had seen back to the lands they came from. They are the all who are assembling and coming towards God’s house in the first reading; they are the all nations who shall serve him from our psalm. They are what St Paul describes as the pagans who now share the same inheritance. In fact, they are us.

Two thousand years on we are the Magi of the world; and like them we are called to do two things. To take the first theme, do we recognise the divine when we see it? Do we recognise in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and in the tabernacle, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ? Do we truly experience the same divinity in this place, our chuches, that the Magi recognised in that infant in his mother’s arms? If we do, how can we do anything other than fall to our knees and worship him? We do not need to offer the symbolic gold of a king, the frankincense of a priest or the myrrh of the dead. We are asked for something far more profound. In the words of the carol: If I were a wise man, I would do my part, but what I can I give him… give my heart.

As for the second idea; do we take the light of the Gospel to the nations today? We do not need to be setting off for the Missions to spread the message of Christ. The Lord knows there is enough darkness in the world, even in our own country. So much so that it can sometimes seem hopeless to be a Christian in the modern world. But to go back to John’s Gospel from Christmas morning: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. We live in a privileged time, a sacramental age when our Baptism causes Christ’s light to shine through us. As we, or our parents, were handed our baptismal candle we were told that this light is entrusted to [us] to be kept burning brightly… keep the flame of faith alive. All we need to do is cooperate with the graces of our baptism and we can be a sign to the nations.

It is the time of year for resolutions and practicalities. Perhaps this year we can, every one of us, resolve to more fully appreciate the divinity of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament; could you arrive ten minutes earlier for Holy Mass, and take the time to kneel (if you are able) and worship him as the Magi did; or perhaps you could make a special effort to visit the Lord during a time of Adoration; or even commit to a regular time each week?

And what of sharing our light? I sometimes hear people say they are embarrassed about public expressions of the faith, even within their own families. The message of the Epiphany is: don’t be! I’m a big fan of St Therese’s adage to ‘do the little things well.’ So do that – the little things: leave the crib up until the Presentation on the 2nd February; put that Child of Prague statue in the front window; bless yourself with a drop of holy water when you enter and leave the house; openly call to St Anthony when you’ve lost your keys; write and talk about the Epiphany blessing over your door. There are so many little things that we can do. Now me, or any one you, doing these things, won’t change the world. But if Kings Heath (and the Maypole) had 600-odd people all offering small acts of faith, and across the earth 1.4 billion people were doing them, what a wondrous light we could shine into the darkness; what a wonderful witness we could be the world. Even the wise men might not be a patch on us then.

What the Magi did not say…

It is often pointed out that the character of St Joseph never speaks in the Gospels. His earthly fatherhood is one of silent constancy. Without the words themselves we still see a man of faith, who trusted in the messages given to him by God; and in that faith he was able to love the Lord. There is a great deal of good in his silent example alone, but this Epiphany a connection occurred in my mind between St Joseph and the lesson of the Magi. Credit must go to my school’s chaplain for prompting this connection in something he referred to in his Epiphany homily, 2023.

Image: Wise Men Seek Him by Susan Comish

The Magi’s journey would not have been easy for many reasons: the distance; the weather; the dangers of robbery and so on. One of the difficulties not often considered would be language. The Magi were educated men, and when they came searching for the infant King of the Jews they logically went first to Jerusalem. There they conversed with the great and the good; learned scholars who had spent their lives in the study of various disciplines, and of course, King Herod himself. Aramaic was not a widely known language, so it is likely that these conversations took place in a common language such as Hebrew, Greek or Latin, or through court translators. The Magi would have been prepared for this; they would have known how the courts of great men worked, and the etiquette to be followed. They asked their questions and were honest in the answers they gave to Herod’s questions in return. But then they were pointed to a small town south of the city; there would be no scholars or translators there.

And so comes our parallel with the silence of St Joseph. The talkative Magi of Jerusalem do indeed find what they sought. “Going into the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling to their knees they did him homage.” St Matthew puts no words into their mouths now. Perhaps a difficulty of language rendered conversation impossible; perhaps they were struck with a divine awe; perhaps there was an awkward and unrecorded conversation of sorts. Whatever the truth of that visit, St Matthew chooses to recount their visit as an example of silent homage to the Christ-child. They knew that this child was something special. Psalm 111 teaches that “the fear of the Lord is the first stage of Wisdom.” It seems from their visit to Jerusalem that their knowledge of the Jewish scriptures was lacking, but if proof of the Magi as ‘wise men’ were needed, we should have all we need in the way that they fell to their knees in silent wonder.

Image: Wise Men Adoring Christ Child by Ade Bethune

From the earliest days of the Church silence has been recognised as a powerful thing. The Lord himself would retreat into the wilderness alone or with his disciples to pray and commune with his Father. John the Baptist, the desert fathers and medieval hermits all recognised that the Lord could be found in the quiet of the wilderness. Contemplative religious orders spend much of their time in silence listening for the Lord’s guidance and praying for the needs of the world without distraction.

Of course for those of us in the secular world, noise is a constant. Sometimes that is external noise: cars, music and conversation around us; but sometimes it is the noise of our own minds, which cannot switch off from the cares and worries of daily life. Fortunately as Catholics we have a beautiful solution to this. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, whether at Exposition with the Lord in a monstrance or of the reposed Sacrament in a tabernacle, gives us time to remove ourselves from the noise of the world. Any church provides the respite from the external noise, but releasing our own minds is far more difficult. I do not intend to give a list of exercises for quietening one’s mind in prayer here, but I will suggest that it takes practice, and we should not be disheartened or put off because we find it difficult to let go of our earthly worries the first time, or consistently every time we try.

What we can and really must do, is make the effort. While our internal journey is very different from the travelling of the Magi, it can seem just as difficult. What we can be assured of however, is that it has the same end; to offer our true and complete homage to the one Lord and Saviour. We can be sure that whenever, and however often we come to him, the Lord will be waiting for us: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”