Epiphany, January 7, 2024

/

There are epiphanies in all of our lives; how do we recognize and honor them?

Matthew 2:1–12

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.”

After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.

They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.

Music Meditations

Opening Prayer

Father, all powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks.
Today you revealed in Christ your eternal plan of salvation, and showed him as the light of all peoples.
Now that his glory has shone among us, you have renewed humanity in his immortal image.

Companions for the Journey

From “First Impressions”, a service of the Southern Dominican Province, 2011:

We do not know much about the Magi. For example, the text does not tell us there were three, as they are often depicted in paintings and creches. We do not know if they came from different nations or races. We are not sure if they were priests, royalty or astrologers. Their anonymity makes it possible for Christian tradition to place much symbolic meaning on them: they have come to symbolize diversity of race, ethnic background and nationalities. As today’s reading from Ephesians suggests, God’s grace has revealed the mystery to us that all peoples, not just a chosen few, will come to discover their place as, “co-heirs,” partners in the promise in Christ through the gospel. Matthew has depicted in the Magi the gospel truth that seekers from all nations will come to recognize Christ and be welcome in his presence. And, that the promise of Israel’s being a light for the nations, as the prophets anticipated, is now fulfilled in Christ.

Contentment isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Coasting along may feel smooth and familiar but it won’t take us anywhere new. It won’t take us on an uncomfortable journey where we don’t know the landmarks; where we will have to keep trusting the voice inside that urges us not to turn back or stop. Leaving contentment behind will require us to keep looking up ahead, placing one foot in front of the other, asking questions and trusting. There will surely be doubts and regrets along the way, but new life will also open up for us and eventually, like the Magi, we will come to the place where God waits for us. What will God look like at that moment? Certainly what the Magi saw was hardly impressive; a poor family in a nondescript village and an infant. However, the Magi had been led by the light of the star. Was it a star in the heavens or an interior light that kept them looking and then shone brightly for them, revealing the truth at the end of their quest?

God was present among the obscure; hidden in an out-of-the-way place. No splash, no “color commentator” to make God’s presence exciting for the sporting spectator. Yet, it took three strangers from another place and tradition to recognize someone special. Does it take the outsider in our midst to help us see beneath the surface or admit what we have been afraid to admit about our lives? So many disclaim the presence of God in their lives or down play and hide the gifts they have. Sometimes it’s the stranger or the person outside our familial surroundings who makes us aware of how gifted by God we are. People like teachers, mentors, religious guides, friends, etc., are often like the Magi visitors, who come from elsewhere and spot the divine light in us. They “manifest” (for that is what Epiphany is about, the manifestation of God in our world) to us the God we have been overlooking. These are light-bearers, stars that guide us to meet the Holy Presence in our lives and in the world around us. They shine a light before us and encourage us to venture out, to see life and ourselves from another perspective.

For those of us who leave the familiar and follow a distant light we may find ourselves in a place we never would have imagined going. There we will meet the divine—but in disguise, of course. For the Magi it was the infant in the crib. For us, the journey may take us to entirely new places: teaching religion to teenagers in the church basement; our wedding day and a person we have found and with whom we have decided to journey the rest of our days; a new way of praying; a bereavement group that begins to open new life for us after a death; a vocation in ministry; old age, faced not with dread, but excitement and discovery; new friends who have less materially to share, but more spiritually, etc.

We have come to church to celebrate Epiphany. How else might we celebrate this feast of recognition? We might recognize and honor the divine presence in the less important of our society: the children around us; those who clear our tables in restaurants; who sell us newspapers on the corner; who collect our garbage; who harvest our crops; who are very aged; who are weak, infirm or dying.

Today we also ask God to shake us out of our religious complacency and, like the Magi, stir up a hunger for God in us. Ask for the courage to let go of the comfortable and familiar and request the energy to once again go looking for God. Ask to be open to finding the holy in unfamiliar and “unholy” places. Ask for forgiveness for accepting what is immediately around us and for being satisfied with the status quo. Ask for the grace not to be disappointed when God isn’t found in the routine of familiar prayers and predictable ritual. Ask for a sense of wonder and awe in the little things of life that contain the spark of the divine. Ask for the spirit of a searcher, one willing to look up and follow a star beyond familiar borders. Ask to be able to put aside barriers that keep us apart from “the others”. Ask for the help to recognize the revelation of God, despite all appearances to the contrary. Ask for an Epiphany.

Further reflection:

Weekly Memorization

Taken from the gospel for today’s session…

Where is the newborn King of the Jews?

Living the Good News

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion?

Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions or the meditations which follow:

Reflection Questions

  • What does this tale of the Magi say about where God is and who God is?
  • The visit of the Magi does not show up anywhere in recorded history as a factual report; it is a biblical story full of meaning for us. We should not be asking: “Did it really happen like that?”, but rather: “What does it mean?” What did the story mean to you as a child?
    What does this story mean to you now?
  • Magi were outsiders, who did not consider themselves special in God’s eyes. Yet it was to them that the reality of Jesus was revealed.
    Do you know of any outsiders that have had insights or experience about God, or the church?
    What does that tell us about who God welcomes into the mystery of God’s life and presence?
  • Have I ever viewed anyone else as a religious outsider?
    Have I ever viewed anyone else as an outsider in my friends, my family, my ethnic group, my country?
    What does this tell me about staying in my comfort zone?
  • What do you think helped the Magi to persevere on this arduous journey?
    Do I respect the spiritual journeys of others, even if I do not understand where they are going or why?
  • Someone said Christianity is lots of long walks. What have some of yours been?
    Have you always known of the ultimate destination or were you figuring that out as you went along?
  • What is the role of an open mind in a spiritual quest?
    What might be the role of doubts in a spiritual quest?
  • Where is God in the dark, lonely and uncertain moments of your life?
    Where are the stars in my life, guiding me to something?
  • To US a child is born. Do I believe that, really?
  • The magi brought gifts to the child Jesus and his parents. Since God has everything, what gift can I give to God?
  • What gifts can I bring to the world—and are they what is left over after I have every experience, every comfort, every honor, every material advantage I want for my self and my family, or are these gifts something I am sharing with the least of my brethren?
  • The Magi were not followers of the tradition into which Jesus was born. Which comes first in the quest for God?:
    faith in a particular set of theological principles,
    an unblemished moral life,
    obedience to those who hold positions of leadership in the church,
    theological degrees or scholarship,
    a yearning for meaning and union with Jesus
  • Do we ever sit in judgment on those who we think might be/ought to be excluded from God’s love (gays, unmarried mothers, those in the opposite political party, the rich, those whose lives are not in line with Catholic doctrine)?
  • The Magi followed a bright star which brought them a revelation of a new truth.
    Are you a bright star for anyone, helping them see, for example, the way to God’s love?
  • Epiphanies are sudden moments of truth, joy, clarity and hope which emerge when we least expect it.
    Have you ever experienced an epiphany, even a small “aha!” moment?
  • From First Impressions, a service of the southern Dominican Province:
    Where are we looking for Jesus today? Even if we had no other gospel story than this one, we should know where to look: among the newcomers and displaced; among the newborn poor and their families; among those who have no roots and are searching; among those pushed around by an uncaring system of laws and decrees.
    Would I describe myself as one of the modern-day magi, a searcher for God?
    How do I go about that search each day?
  • From First Impressions, a service of the southern Dominican Province:
    The Magi remind us that our quest for the living God must never end. Nor can we be complacent with where we are on our faith journey, or satisfied with our current spiritual life. Such satisfaction can be a form of darkness. There is always more about the mysterious ways of God to be discovered if only, like the Magi, we are willing to make the journey our inner light prompts us to begin.
    Do I feel my faith life is something I do out of habit and routine?
    What steps might I take to renew my spirit?

Meditations

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:

From Fr. J. Ronald Knott, a priest of the Archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky and a blogger:

[In the church], instead of talking people into going on spiritual adventure, we often just led religious tours. We give up the goal of transforming people and settle for conformity. If you think taking a tour of shrines of the Holy Land is the same as walking in the footsteps of Jesus, you’re not on a spiritual adventure, you’re on a package tour. These Magi people were not on a tour. They were on a scary, spiritual adventure–one that took massive amounts of personal courage…
Too many of us just don’t believe in going places. There is so much about our church that values keeping people in bounds, constraining the adventurous. We often punish the adventurous and reward, protect and coddle the mediocre. Just like the Magi, Jesus left his carpenter shop and went on a spiritual adventure. He went about inviting others to drop what they were doing and follow him without looking back.

Religiously, Am I on an adventure or on a package tour?
What form does my membership in the Catholic Church take?

A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination:

Adapted from “An Epiphany” by Rev Bob Wicker:

I had been doing some calculations in the sand when like a thunderbolt two of my old friends walked up the road to meet me. They said they heard stories of people beyond the river where wondrous signs foretold big changes – changes that would make the world different forever. So we stood there in the road a long time, three old friends now living in faraway places only to find ourselves called together by events and stories and signs we did not understand. We argued first about what we knew, then we argued about what we didn’t know.

What do these things mean, we wondered? What should we do? What can we do?

Next we began to plan our journey with the same excitement we had when we first encountered each other on a pilgrimage three decades earlier. We knew once again that we had to travel where the heavens directed us. Wandering planets, stars and great comets pointed the way. Will it be a wedding, a coronation, a death or a birth, we wondered. Who are the people in this faraway land whose royalty is marked by signs in the heavens? Whatever the occasion we would honor it with gifts suitable for a royal event. We packed and set off in the cold darkness guided only by our reckonings of the path the heavens gave us.  The long journey fueled many doubts and more arguments over campfires. This desert is not safe with wild animals and robbers. Why are we doing this anyway? What brought us all the way out here? Yet each time doubt and fear rose in our bellies like indigestion, one of us would point out that you do not take a journey because you know all the answers. Someone else would note how our path seemed to be set out before us like a long carpet. We all knew just where we had to go. We just weren’t sure why.

Has there been a time in your life when you wondered where you were headed and why? It is comforting to know that others who have come before us have often felt the same way. Pray the following prayer of Thomas Merton: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Poetic Reflections:

Here are some lovely poems for you to just enjoy this week and throughout the Christmas season:

"The Journey Of The Magi”
by T. S. Eliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

“The Wise”
by William Everson (BROTHER ANTONINUS, O.P.)

Miles across the turbulent kingdoms
They came for it, but that was nothing,
That was the least. Drunk with vision,
Rain stringing in the ragged beards,
When a beast lamed, they caught up another
And goaded west.
For the time was on them.
Once, as it may, in the life of a man,
Once, as it was, in the life of mankind,
All is corrected. And their years of pursuit,
Raw-eyed reading the wrong texts,
Charting the doubtful calculations,
Those nights knotted with thought,
When dawn held off, and the rooster
Rattled the leaves with his blind assertion—
All that, they regarded, under the Sign,
No longer as search but as preparation.
For when the mark was made, they saw it.
Nor stopped to reckon the fallible years,
But rejoiced and followed,
And are called “wise”, who learned that Truth,
When sought and at last seen,
Is never found. It is given.
And they brought their camels
Breakneck into that village,
And flung themselves down in the dung and dirt of that place,
And kissed that ground, and the tears
Ran on their faces, where the rain had

“On the Mystery of the Incarnation”
by Denise Levertov

It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do,
and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.

“The Three Holy Kings”
by Ranier Maria Rilke

Legend

Once long ago when at the desert’s edge
a Lord’s hand spread open–
as if a fruit should deep in summer
proclaim its seed–
there was a miracle: across
vast distances a constellation formed
out of three kings and a star.
Three kings from On-the-Way
and the star Everywhere,
who all pushed on (just think !)
to the right a Rex and the left a Rex
toward a silent stall.
What was there that they didn’t bring
to the stall of Bethlehem!
Each step clanked out ahead of them,
as the one who rode the sable horse
sat plush and velvet-snug.
And the one who walked upon his right
was like some man of gold,
and the one who sauntered on his left
with sling and swing
and jang and jing
from a round silver thing
that hung swaying inside rings,
began to smoke deep blue.
Then the star Everywhere laughed so strangely over them,
and ran ahead and found the stall and said to Mary:
I am bringing here an errantry
made up of many strangers.
Three kings with ancient might
heavy with gold and topaz
and dark, dim, and heathenish–
but don’t you be afraid.
They have all three at home
twelve daughters, not one son,
so they’ll ask for the use of yours
as sunshine for their heaven’s blue
and comfort for their throne.
Yet don’t straightaway believe: merely
some sparkle-prince and heathen-sheik
is to be your young son’s lot.
Consider: the road is long.
They’ve wandered far, like herdsmen,
and meanwhile their ripe empire falls
into the lap of Lord knows whom.
and while here, warmly like westwind,
the ox snorts into their ear,
they are perhaps already destitute
and headless, for all they know.
So with your smile cast light
on that confusion which they are,
and turn your countenance
toward dawning with your child:
there in blue lines lies
what each one left for you:
Emeralda and Rubinien
and the Valley of Turquoise.

Closing Prayer

Jesus, you are a mystery to me: mysterious are your words; mysterious are your teachings. Help me to be open to you and your message, in whatever guise you choose. Help me to see you in the mundane, ordinary events as they play out in my life. Help me to see you in those who are strangers, different, insignificant. Help me to make my home a place of welcome, for when I welcome others, I welcome you. What star am I asked to follow this new year, Lord? What of my gifts and talents can I bring to you this year, Lord?