The Epiphany

For the feast of the Epiphany Matthew’s gospel  tells us of the coming of the Magi, mysterious visitors from afar seeking  the new-born King of the Jews.

Years ago I studied in Rome and one course took me down into the Christian catacombs, where early Christians buried their dead in long underground corridors cut in soft stone. They usually scratched the name of the deceased on the burial place along with a little symbol or prayer expressing their hope and their faith. Sometimes they would also have a picture from the bible drawn or painted onto the wall.

In the catacombs of Priscilla one 3rd century grave belongs to a Roman woman named Severa. Her simple profile appears on her grave with an inscription that reads, “Severa, may you live with God.”

Next to the inscription are figures of the three Magi coming with their gifts to the little Child sitting on Mary’s lap. Over the Child is a star, and behind him is the figure of a man who is probably Balaam, the prophet who said that a star would announce a new king in Judea. (Numbers 24,15-19)

Severa believed that this Child brought the promise of eternal life, not only to  the Jews symbolized by the shepherds tending their sheep in the Bethlehem hills. The Child brought eternal life to her and foreigners like her. The Magi brought him gifts, but they returned to their faraway lands with a gift far beyond what they brought him.

I wonder if Severa was baptized on the feast of the Epiphany. It’s the oldest of the Christmas feasts and was a day besides Easter when people were baptized  in Rome and the western church. If she were baptized then, what was she told? Follow the light God gives you on your journey through life. Always follow the light. However small it is, however far it calls you to go, however it might seem  contradicted by what the world around you says. Sometimes it may not seem to be there at all, but it will be there again.  There’s a star guiding us through life.

The earliest representations of the Magi picture them of different ages. One old, one middle-aged, one young. Follow the light that’s given you all through your life.

The Apostles’ Creed we say at Mass was a summary of the faith Severa was taught when she was baptized. This world is God’s world, who created it and calls it to evolve to its destiny. Jesus Christ is God’s Son, born of Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. On the third day he rose from the dead.

She came to believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

If Severa heard the story of Herod the Great, the powerful king in our gospel story, she would surely be reminded of the powerful, often paranoid emperors, who ruled in Rome then. But Severa followed Jesus Christ, more powerful than them all.

“Severa, may we live with you in God.”

Christmas: A Call to Baptism

Matthew’s gospel was the gospel most used for catechesis in the early church. It also plays an important role in the creation of our Christmas season. It gives us the Feast of the Epiphany, for example. Jesus Christ came for the gentiles as well as for the Jews.

I think Matthew’s gospel is also an important source for our upcoming Feast of the Baptism of Jesus which closes the Christmas season. Matthew sees baptism as a way of repentance. That’s how John the Baptist describes it in Matthew’s gospel: “In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming: ‘Repent, the kingdom of God is near.’” (Mt 3,1-2)

When Pharisee and Sadducees come for baptism, John calls them “a brood of vipers” because they presume they are saved as “children of Abraham.” “God is able to raise up from these stones children of Abraham, “ John says to them.

Baptism is not an entitlement. Baptism is a commitment to repentance. That’s important for us to realize too.

But repentance is a difficult path. Can we do it alone?  John continues in Matthew’s gospel with the promise that one more powerful than he is coming. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” When we are baptized into Christ, we are given the Holy Spirit and his fire to continue on the path of repentance.

Christmas is not just for looking at the Child in a manger; it’s a call  to enter into the mystery of Jesus Christ.

 

The Big Picture: The Magi

This is the time of the year when people make predictions about the future. It’s a time to look back and look forward.

Our local newspaper on Friday in Hudson County featured the predictions of a local psychic about the future of our mayor, our governor, our senator and a variety of local politicians. Psychics are big this time of year.

The host of PBS’s Newshour the other night asked his two experts to talk about the big picture ahead. “What does it look like?” They talked about the “Tea Party,” possible roll-backs in the health care program, the new Republican majority in Congress. That’s about as far as they went. I would guess the cable news channels talked about the same things from even a narrower perspective: politics and economics–American politics and the American economic picture.

Something’s missing. Our “big picture” is really a small picture. We seem to lack of larger vision of life.

We live in a secular age, an age of “expressive individualism.”(Charles Taylor) One of the drawbacks of the secular mind is its tendancy to be small-minded, to concentrate on the here and now, on what we see and do, on our personal interests. Even believers are part of a secular age and share its tendancies.

The secular age needs the spark of revelation.

What about the mystery of the Epiphany we celebrate today? Can it bring sparks to secular minds?

Let’s take the gospel story of the Magi out of its Christmas card setting and ask what its all about. The Magi were strangers, people coming from afar, bringing gifts. They recognized the Child whom others did not see. Then, we may surmise, they brought news of him back to their own people and part of the world.

The other day I was talking to a young priest from my community in Kenya, an African who’s studying now in Chicago. He was asking me about the new media and how to reach others through it. He wants to learn as much as he can from us, but he also thinks that Africa has something to offer the world, and his church in Kenya as something to contribute to the church beyond it.

Is he the Magi coming to us today?

Matthew’s gospel is the only gospel with the story of the Magi. The gospel was written for Jewish Christians in Galilee and the neighboring areas and it emphasizes that Jesus came first to them. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Jesus tells the Canaanite woman, a gentile pleading for a cure for her daughter. (Mt 15;24)  “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Jesus instructs the twelve as he sends them out earlier in his gospel. (Mt 10, 5)

Were these stories Matthew’s way to bolster the faith of  Jewish Christians beset by a powerful Jewish orthodoxy that questioned their belief in Jesus Christ? Was Matthew’s story of the magi also a reminder that the gospel was meant for others besides them?

Jesus came to save all, even though his first ministry was to the Jews. God  saves the world and his gifts and graces are in many peoples and places. He doesn’t save the few.

We live in a big world that’s meant to be one. It’s not a world to be ignored. Great gifts and burdens are there, gifts and burdens meant to be shared. An earthquake in Haiti, for example,  is our tragedy too.  A worldwide depression is our problem too. More  and more, we tend to demonize the Muslim world. The Magi may have come from present day Iran or Yemen; two places we hardly view positively today.

We are tending to demonize immigrants in our own country today. Many of us are descendants of immigrants who came here with gifts and burdens. When they first arrived, those here often saw them only as burdens to this country. We know better.

The story of the Magi is not a sweet story about camels and men dressed in strange rich robes. It’s about the big picture, a picture we should see.

Sharing His Life

As “the true light, which enlightens everyone ” come into the world, Jesus came not only that we might see his glory but also that we might share in it. “From his fullness we have all received, grace for grace.” (John 1,16) His baptism in the Jordan and his presence at the marriage feast of Cana in Galilee – two themes from John’s gospel still closely connected with the Feast of the Epiphany– portray Jesus revealed as God’s Son who unites humanity to himself.

From earliest times the Feast of the Epiphany, like Easter, was a day for baptizing those who believed in his name. To them, “he gave power to become children of God.” (John 1, 12) The story of the Magi, from Matthew’s gospel, says that all people are called by God to share in the grace of Jesus Christ. “The Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Jesus Christ through the gospel.” (Ephesians 3, 5-6)

Some historians see the Feast of the Epiphany originating from early Jewish-Christian celebrations of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, which celebrated God’s glory in covenant, light and water. In John’s gospel it’s during this same Jewish feast that the question is asked: Who is Jesus Christ? (cf John 7-10) He is God’s divine Son, the gospel says.

In some places the Feast of the Epiphany is also called the Feast of the Holy Kings or Three King’s Day. Gifts are given in memory of the Magi’s gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Homes are blessed with holy water, in remembrance of that blessed home where the Magi found the Child and his mother.

In the western church, the feast of the Baptism of Jesus follows the celebration of the Epiphany as a separate feast, but it should be seen as  part of that celebration.

“For on this day land and sea share between them the grace of the Saviour, and the whole world is filled with joy. Today’s feast of the Epiphany manifests even more wonders than the feast of Christmas.”  (St. Proclus of Constantinople)

The Hudson is Blessed

I read yesterday an interesting homily on the Epiphany by  St. Proclus of Constantinople from the Eastern Church.

“Today’s feast of the Epiphany manifests even more wonders than the feast of Christmas…At Christmas the King puts on the royal robe of his body; at Epiphany the very source unfolds and, as it were, clothes the river.

On the feast of the Savior’s birth, the earth rejoiced because it bore the Lord in a manger;  but on today’s feast the sea is glad because it receives the blessing of holiness in the river Jordan.”

Usually around this time the New York Daily News or one of the other tabloids has a picture of the Greek Archbishop of New York throwing a cross into the Hudson River which is retrieved by some hardy Greek divers. ( I watched for it, but didn’t see it this year)

The bitter cold, hardly clean waters of the Hudson are blessed with the cross, and so the sea itself that ranges over the whole world is blessed.

A rite of optimism. The waters of the Hudson are grim and cold this time of year, not unlike the world itself. But they are blessed. God’s blessings don’t cease when the times are cold.

The Feast of the Epiphany

The Feast of the Epiphany, celebrated today by all the mainline Christian churches of the east and the west, is a reminder of the universal call to salvation. 

As the Magi come to Bethlehem from afar, so all nations are invited to share in the promise of Jesus Christ. 

St. Leo the Great’s homily for today sees that promise made long ago to Abraham, who was told by God that his offspring would be as many as the stars in the sky.

“Let the full number of the nations take their place in the family of the patriarchs…In the persons of the Magi, let all people adore the Creator of the universe; let God be known, not only in Judea, but in the whole world…

This is the day that Abraham saw, and rejoiced to see…”

We should be like the star, drawing others who are far off, to know Christ, the saint says.

Like all mysteries, the mystery of the Epiphany is not over. It continues. How shall the nations of today, the peoples of the world, be led to Christ? How can we shine in the darkness, like the star, and lead them to the Child, the Word made flesh?

For more on the Epiphany, see 

http://www.cptryon.org/prayer/adx/x3k.html