Epiphany
Jan. 8, 2017
Matt 2: 1-12
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.
“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the
days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem…” (Matt 2:
1).
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Adoration of the Magi
Fra Angelico, ca. 1445
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Who are these strange visitors, these unusual
visitors, these magi “from the east”? We certainly wish St. Matthew had told us
more. The oral tradition of the early
disciples of Jesus, passed down—we presume—from our Blessed Mother to the
apostles to the 1st generations of Christians probably had lost track of some
of the details of the story; you can think, maybe, of some of your own family
stories going back to your grandparents or great-grandparents. When Matthew, sometime in the 8th decade of
the 1st century (we estimate), wrote the story down to introduce his Gospel, he
included only information that the Church considered truly important, perhaps
all that was remembered with any certainty.
According to renowned New Testament scholar Fr.
Raymond Brown, the term magi, or magus in the singular, referred to men
who were “engaged in occult arts:
astronomers, fortunetellers, priestly augurers, and magicians of varying
degrees of plausibility. Matthew
probably thinks of astronomers.”[1] I’m not sure why Fr. Brown would call
astronomy an “occult art,” but perhaps in the 1st century it was more akin to
astrology, which is another art altogether.
Had Fr. Brown been writing a few years later, he might also have
mentioned Jedi knights or Dumbledore and his pupils.[2] Be that as it may, we’ve come to understand
the magi as “wise men” in general. I
hope it doesn’t shake anyone’s faith to realize that they weren’t kings at all;
that’s a medieval legend, about as reliable as the old English carol “I Saw
Three Ships” come sailing into Bethlehem (which isn’t anywhere near the water).
While Matthew says the magi brought 3 gifts to the
Christ Child, he doesn’t say how many wise men made the journey “from the
east,” i.e., from Babylonia or Persia. They
could have been 2, 3, 5, 10—and a long journey “from the east” would have
invited a much larger party than 3 if only for safety. Matthew doesn’t say clearly when they arrived
in Jerusalem, but he does say later, in the story about Herod’s murder of all
the male children in and around Bethlehem, that they had 1st seen the star up
to 2 years previously (which, by the way, would place the birth of Jesus in 6
or 7 B.C. Herod died in 4 B.C.). And he says that they found “the child with
Mary his mother on entering the house” where they were (2:11)—not in a stable.
But those sorts of details are secondary. What’s the message of the magi’s coming to Bethlehem and paying homage to the
newborn king of the Jews (cf. 2:2,11)? 1st
and most important is that this Child is king of all peoples, both Jews and
Gentiles. Matthew doesn’t tell us
anything about Jewish shepherds coming to the manger (that’s St. Luke); he
presents these foreigners, these pagans, these Gentiles, as the 1st ones to
honor Christ, to submit themselves to his majesty. Matthew will end his Gospel on a similar
note, when Jesus commissions the apostles to go out into the whole world and
“make disciples of all nations” (28:19).
The Good News that Jesus “shall save his people from their sins”—the
angel’s words to St. Joseph in ch. 1:21—is for all people everywhere. All people are his people!
These pagan wise men began their discovery of
God’s Good News by observing a star.
From ancient times men and women have been able to discover something
about God and to worship him in some fashion based on natural reason, on
philosophy, on the observance of nature, on the natural instinct for justice
that’s in the human heart, etc. That’s
still true today for honest searchers into truth and wisdom.
But the magi couldn’t find this Savior on their
own. The star led them to Jerusalem—the
logical place to look for a new king of the Jewish people. But then they were lost. They needed some additional help, and this
they found in divine revelation, in the Sacred Scriptures, which the chief
priests and the scribes had studied and which they revealed to King Herod and
the strangers from the East. While we
can know God to some extent from natural reason—nature, philosophy, etc.—we
can’t know him fully without revelation.
To know God more completely, we must have the Scriptures opened for us;
we must encounter Jesus Christ, the living Word of God; we must listen to the
teaching of Christ’s Church, not making new revelation but interpreting the
ancient revelation of the Scriptures and the Person of Jesus.
The chief priests and the scribes presented the
revelation to the magi and King Herod.
Then all of them had to make a decision.
What would they do about what had been revealed to them? They all knew about the star and the magi’s
understanding of its meaning, and they all heard what the Hebrew prophets had
said about the Messiah.
The magi continued on their mission, seeking the
One whom God had sent. They paid him
homage, presented their gifts, and submitted themselves to Christ the King.
Not so Herod, the chief priests, and the
scribes. Matthew makes the point that
“all Jerusalem” was “greatly troubled” by what the magi reported, and no one—no
one!—went along with the Gentile searchers to seek and meet the Messiah. They were indifferent or even hostile to
God’s greatest revelation. They chose to
continue living in their fear, to cling to their fragile earthly power, to do
vicious violence upon the innocent, to reject the One who offers to all
humanity a heavenly kingdom so much more precious than ruling over Judea. Here Matthew of course is foreshadowing
Jesus’ condemnation 35 years later by the successors of King Herod and these
Jewish leaders.
What is our decision about “the newborn king of
the Jews”? How seriously are we looking
for God? Where do we look for him? If we think we’ve found him in a cute baby
lying in the hay, we haven’t looked far enuf.
When the truth and goodness of Jesus are presented to us in the Gospels,
in the rest of the Scriptures, in the teaching of the Church that Jesus
commissioned to make disciples of all nations, are we ready to accept that
truth and goodness, submit ourselves to them, live by them, practice truth and
goodness as God’s revelation shows us? God’s
revealed truth convicts us as sinners because like Herod and his friends in
Jerusalem we often choose darkness rather than light, fear rather than love,
evil rather than goodness. God’s revealed
goodness, on the other hand, assures us that our repentance brings us the
forgiveness and mercy we don’t deserve and can’t earn, thru the passion and
resurrection of Jesus. How much homage
do we pay to humanity’s King, and what treasures do we offer him?
[1] An Adult Christ at Christmas. Essays on the Three Biblical Christmas
Stories: Matthew 2 and Luke 2 (Collegeville, 1978), p. 11, n. 18.
[2] I’m sure he wouldn’t have
done that in his scholarly publications; maybe in a less formal lecture.
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