January 5, 2014

Gospel Commentary from the Irish Dominicans

Ours is not the first age to look east for wisdom; the East has always had a reputation for it. The word ‘magi’ is translated here as “wise men.” ‘Magus’ meant different things: a magus was a member of the Persian priestly caste; or one who possessed occult knowledge and power (this is the origin of our word ‘magic’). If people in those times had the careless habit of throwing around the term ‘New Age’ as we do now, the Magi would certainly have been called New Agers.

Herod was one of history’s great tyrants: he spared no one, not even his own family; to keep his grip on power he murdered his wife, three of his sons, his brother-in-law, an uncle, and even his mother-in-law. He had been appointed “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate in 40 BC and he had already reigned for over thirty years. He was in no mind to hear of a new king, especially one who was no son of his. “He was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.” He was frightened to hear of a rival, and the people were frightened because they knew what he was capable of. But the chief priests and the scribes - the religious authorities of the day - were able to give him directions in locating this rival. They knew in detail about the expected arrival of “the anointed one.” They had studied the Scriptures, they knew the prophecies, they knew where to look. And they used all that knowledge to direct a killer to him. Nor was it just a momentary lapse of judgment: Herod would fail to kill him, but later on they themselves would succeed.

The Magi were foreigners, pagans, astrologers: everything that was most base in the eyes of the religious authorities. Though they had not the benefit of the prophecies the Magi came and did the Child homage. Tradition calls them “kings” - judging, probably, by the wealth of the gifts they brought. At any rate they came looking for a king. Where do you look for a king? In a palace. Who else is likely to be there? A royal family. But the Magi came to a cave or a stable where they found a poor family, with animals and perhaps a few shepherds. All the appearances would have told them they had made a ridiculous mistake, yet “falling to their knees, they did him homage.”

We can study the significance of this from many angles. Preparation is no guarantee that you will be ready; it may actually blind you, because you prepare according to your own idea. There is no substitute for an open heart; learning sometimes has the effect of closing the heart, and in some cases even the mind. Religious authority is the most perilous of all: the claims are absolute, the deepest things are at stake, and with the years comes the habit of listening to no one. The most chilling feature of this story is the collusion of the religious leaders with Herod. Sadly this has sometimes been repeated in the history of the Church.

Later on, when simple people were shouting out their enthusiasm for Jesus, the Pharisees said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out" (Luke 19:40-41). We are not to be surprised at where praise of God can spring up. It is not recorded that any of the authorities went with to Magi to search for the Child; it was the pagan astrologers who sought and found him.

-- Today’s Good News, the website of the Dominicans of Ireland

The wise men opened their treasure and offered to the Lord gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, alleluia.

Mighty seas and rivers, bless the Lord; springs of water, sing his praises, alleluia.

– Antiphons, Morning Prayer, Roman rite

As With Gladness Men of Old

As with gladness men of old

Did the guiding star behold,

As with joy they hailed its light,

Leading onward, beaming bright;

So, most gracious Lord, may we

Evermore be led to Thee.

As with joyful steps they sped

To that lowly manger bed,

There to bend the knee before

Him whom heav’n and earth adore;

So may we, with willing feet,

Ever seek Thy mercy seat.

As they offered gifts most rare

At that manger rude and bare;

So may we with holy joy,

Pure and free from sin’s alloy,

All our costliest treasures bring,

Christ, to Thee, our heav’nly King.

Holy Jesus, every day

Keep us in the narrow way;

And, when earthly things are past,

Bring our ransomed souls at last

Where they need no star to guide,

Where no clouds Thy glory hide.

In the heavenly country bright,

Need they no created light;

Thou its Light, its Joy, its Crown,

Thou its Sun which goes not down; ⁰⁶

There for ever may we sing

Alleluias to our King.

– The lyrics to this hymn were written by William Chatterton Dix, in 1860, on Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, while he was sick in bed. It is often sung to the tune of “For the Beauty of the Earth.”

You are alive. It needn’t have been so. It wasn’t so once, and it will not be so forever. But it is so now. … Take any day and be alive in it. Nobody claims that it will be entirely painless, but no matter. It is your birthday, and there are many presents to open. The world is to open. – Frederick Buechner

Reflection for January 5, 2014: The Epiphany of the Lord

The rest of the country is pretty much done with Christmas now, the decorations all taken down and bundled away in the basement, but here in the Catholic Church, we are still in Christmastide. Christmas takes in so much more than just the birth of Mary’s child. Today we celebrate the climax of the traditional Twelve Days of the season: the Epiphany of Our Lord, which of old was called Twelfth Night. Next week’s solemnity, the Baptism of the Lord, marks the true end of our Christmas season. Then it’s time to catch our breath with a snippet of Ordinary Time. A fairly brief snippet of Ordinary Time, because Ash Wednesday arrives on the 17^th of February, and before we know it we’ll be up to our sinful elbows in Lent. It seems like an odd thing, the way Christmas and Lent collide: One of the happiest times of the year, slamming right into one of the hardest. It seems strange that it should be this way, except, of course, that life is always that way: joy and sorrow never far apart, two sides of the same spinning coin.

Listen to the words of the song we sing today, and think about the story that they tell:

We three kings of Orient are

bearing gifts we traverse afar

Field and fountain, moor and mountain following yonder star

So it begins, in a solemn minor key, swelling into the grand refrain:

O star of wonder, star of night, star of royal beauty bright

Westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light.

And then each of the three kings takes up a verse:

Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown him again

King forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.

So sings the first king, filled with majesty, followed by the second:

Frankincense to offer have I, incense owns a Deity nigh

Prayer and praising gladly raising, worship him, God on high

A verse that seems to glitter with the gold that it describes.

And this is all such delightful stuff, the stuff of Christmas cards…. Until we come to the third king’s ominous verse:

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom

Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

What??? Now that is a horse, or camel, of a different color, and I for one would think twice before I invited that particular king to a party. Myrrh to celebrate a birth? A bitter perfume that breathes a life of gathering gloom. Myrrh is used to anoint dead bodies! What do you say to a gift like that at a child’s birthday party? “Thanks for the gold and the frankincense, but if it’s all the same, you can keep the myrrh!” How gladly would Mary and Joseph have refused that bittersweet gift – taken it back to the nearest Bethlehem Walmart and exchanged it for something useful, like a blender or a box of diapers. Except that it doesn’t work that way. Not at the birth of the Child Jesus, and not at any other birth, either. The shadow of the cross always falls across the manger. As it falls across every child ever born. We are each born owing God a death, and that debt is always called in before we’re ready. This is not because God is punishing us (what kind of sin would a loving God ever punish an innocent baby for?) but because that is the way this world is set up, here and now, on this beautiful, broken planet, where every sunbeam casts a shadow, and every life will end in a death.

No, I don’t like it, either; in fact, I hate it. But I know it’s simply the way that it is, whether I like it or not. And that would be very cold comfort indeed, except for the other side of the spinning coin. This world is always filled with shadows, but the light that casts those shadows is brighter still. And this is the gift of Epiphany. God has made an amazing thing known to us through his son Jesus. You see, the way it is now is not the way it will always be. There is so much more to the story than what we see. Just as death is hidden in life, so life is hidden in death: and life will spring up again from the shadow like a blooming flower, and our souls will rise from the ashes one day like bright-winged butterflies.

How do we know this is so? Well, there’s no way we can know it for sure; that is, after all, what faith is all about. Faith is not a mathematical equation, subject to demonstration and proof on a blackboard. No, St. Paul put it best: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. You don’t need to have faith in, say, the theory of gravity; that is something that is demonstrated to you every day of your life (particularly this time of year, when we’re all falling down on the ice). You don’t need faith to know that if you fall, you will hit the ground, sometimes very hard. But you do need faith to know you will be able to get up again, once you fall. You do need faith in order to love, or to believe you are loved – to reach out a hand when you fall and know that someone will help you back up again. Faith is not an easy thing; I wish it was. But it is a beautiful thing. Knowledge is the ground we walk on, hard and firm; faith is the air we breathe in order to live – invisible but necessary, every minute we’re here on this earth. Faith is the gift the Magi brought, brighter than gold and sweeter than frankincense and much harder to deal with than funereal myrrh. The baby they saw in that long-ago manger grew up to teach us how to live and love and laugh and endure, and then he went before us into death, carrying God’s love in his hands like a brilliant burning torch. His light is shining in the darkness now, and the dark can’t ever overcome it. It shines to light our long way home, to the loving arms of the God who made us. In Jesus’ name, amen and alleluia! -- Diane Sylvain