Merry Christmas! Maybe no one has said that to you in a while (Maybe no one has said Happy New Year to you in a while either!); but we are still very deep in the Christmas Season. I have sometimes heard the Feast of the Epiphany referred to as “Little Christmas.” If anything, the Epiphany should be called “Big Christmas.” When the angels proclaimed “glad tidings of great joy for all the people,” they really meant all of the people—not just the people of the promise or people who were habitually devout and holy. The word “epiphany” means a “bursting forth”. What was revealed to a small group of people on Christmas is meant for the whole world. When Christ came, it was an explosion so massive that it demolished the walls that we try to erect to keep people apart. The Magi, who are Gentiles and who come from a foreign country to worship Christ, offer the first concrete evidence that the love, compassion, and saving grace that Christ brought really was meant for everybody. Of course, just because everyone is invited does not mean that everyone wants to come. That is, in fact, a persistent theme in Jesus’ parables. The Gospel for today’s feast about the visit of the Magi highlights three different ways that people of every generation have reacted to the news of Christ’s coming .
First, we have King Herod. The Magi show up in Jerusalem asking about a new born King of the Jews. But Herod IS the King of the Jews. He was installed as King with the help of the Roman Emperor and the Roman Legions. In truth he has no real claim on the title of King, and now his illegitimacy is being exposed. We know from many outside sources that Herod was cruel, paranoid, and an egomaniac; so, it is not surprising that he saw a defenseless child as a threat to his power. But Herod plays it cool. Even though he has no intention of letting Jesus into his life or changing his life in any way, he pretends to be very religious in front of the Magi. He expresses a desire to go worship the new King, only to use the information for his own purposes. Now, we do not have to be as cruel and paranoid and deceptive as Herod to respond to Christ’s coming in exactly the same way. When our life is all about us and our program for happiness, there is little room for Christ. Like Herod we may go through the motions of being religious. We may decorate and give gifts and celebrate with a meal and even go to Christmas Mass. But Christ is not the king we serve. We do not directly attempt to kill Christ as Herod did, but we do kill his spirit, his message, his love, and his vision for the world. By the empty witness we give the world, we can tarnish the name of Christian.
Then we have the chief priests, the scribes, and the scholars that Herod consults about this newborn King. They have no problem supplying the information that Herod needs: The Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem of Judea. However, with all their background and years of attention to the Hebrew Scriptures, they never set foot in search of Christ. They passed along the information, and then apparently went back to whatever they were doing. They knew about Jesus, but they never made an effort to get to know Jesus. Their faith was all in their heads. Once again, we do not have to be religious scholars to react just as they did. We can have an opinion about everything pertaining to religion: what the Pope should do, what the Church should do, what Jesus was really like, the role of religion in our secular culture, etc. But our knowledge, our information, our opinions never reach our heart or our hands or our feet. When we graduate from Catholic school, we also graduate from faith and religious practice. We never actually do anything with what we have been taught and what we believe to be true. We do not really desire to know Christ or to follow Christ We just find his life and teaching really interesting.
Then finally we have the Magi themselves. They are variously described as magicians, wise men, kings, or astrologers. We really do not know who they were. What we do know is that they did not have the religious training of the scholars. We also know that they were not so full of themselves that they were no longer searching for truth. They were still seeking wisdom wherever it may be found. They were willing to set foot into the unknown and walk by faith into another country, guided only by a star. Who knows what border patrol was like in those days? Finally, upon arrival, they prostrated themselves as an act of surrender and placed their gifts at the service of the newborn King. They truly put their heart, and their hands and their feet into the journey.
The moral of the story is: It does not matter where we start from. It is where we finish that matters. Will 2026 be the year we put more of our heart and our hands and our feet into following Christ?
Fr. Joe
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