The Epiphany of the Lord
Reflection: The message of the Magi
By SISTER MARY McGLONE
I spent a lifetime looking for you.”
So begins Johnny Lee’s country-western song, “Lookin’ for Love.” Country music, like folktales and the Gospel infancy narratives, philosophizes with homespun wisdom about the most basic human events and emotions. Might the Magi have enjoyed this song along their desert route?
Imaginative versions of the story of the pilgrims who sought the Christ child are generally fairly romantic and formulaic. Matthew’s description of their gifts has solidified the idea that they were three wealthy fellows. Their identity morphed into royalty because people identified them with Isaiah’s description of the nations who would seek Israel’s wisdom and relationship with God.
Realistically, a desert-crossing caravan “from the east” surely included more than three people — not only servants, but different generations of pilgrims representing one or more clans. Perhaps it’s because we know almost nothing about them that they can take hold of our imagination and become the carriers of our own search for meaning.
When we let the Magi camp out in our imagination, they appear as meaningful today as they did centuries ago. First of all, in line with what Pope Francis suggests in “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” they followed their star, seeing it as a natural gift from God, symbolizing the love that draws creation toward universal communion.
The Magi’s first discovery was that the leaders of the very people best prepared to have welcomed that love had gotten caught up in the rhythm of preserving petty power. When the pilgrims sought the wisdom of Israel, the religious leaders cited prophecies while remaining tragically incurious about their implications for their own time.
Unlike the lackeys who theologized for Herod, the Magi were genuine religious pilgrims, people willing to cross physical and intellectual borders. Something we would call grace enticed them, leading them to believe that nature itself was communicating a message of earthshaking importance. Surely, the Magi were wealthy and therefore socially significant in their own right. Yet, like Abraham, they were willing to risk name and fame, to seek more than the comfort and power they knew at home. It takes a particular combination of courage and confidence to do what they did. In a very real sense, they were the precursors of the disciples who abandoned their occupations and even their reputations for the sake of the Gospel.
Today’s feast day is called the Epiphany of the Lord. The Greek word epiphany is a synonym for apocalypse; both refer to a revelation. Merriam-Webster tells us that a revelation is an enlightening or astonishing disclosure. In the contrast between the Magi and Herod’s theologians, today’s Gospel depicts the difference between people who can receive a revelation and those who protect themselves from it. Theologian Silvano Fausti describes those open to revelation with the paradoxical statement: “The person who seeks is the person who knows.”
What did the Magi know? They knew that their stores of wisdom, knowledge and certainties were smaller than the truth. They knew that growth requires displacement, the uncomfortable process of venturing into an unknown that stretches and questions assumptions, all for the sake of a greater depth of being.
Johnny Lee’s song describes the wrong places he’d sought love. Most of us could write our own list of dead-end attempts at finding our heart’s desire. Matthew’s Magi tell us what Luke’s Emmaus travelers learned: Life is a journey — always moving forward. Each step can open us to more. The Magi also warn us about what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace: the easy answers and religious facts that provide security rather than call us into growth.
In sum, the Magi had more faith in God than in their own ideas and understanding. They were willing to sing “I spent a lifetime looking for you” for the rest of their lives. We might look to them as the patron saints of evolution, reminders that no matter how much we accomplish, learn or love, God keeps offering more to those who are willing to seek and find it.
The feast of the Epiphany invites us to holy disquiet, a way of living that has nothing to do with grumbling or complaint. We can make holy disquiet a lifelong posture by nurturing it with wonder, gratitude and hope — all of which require humility. Holy disquiet leads us to appreciate the good of every moment not as something to be grasped, but as a promise of more.
Surely, we will sometimes end up in the wrong places, but, like the Magi who could leave Herod to his own devices, it’s always possible to reorient ourselves. Our journey will not end on this Earth, but we cannot do better than spend our lifetime seeking.
Reading I
(Isaiah 60: 1-6)
Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! Your light has come,
the glory of the Lord shines upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth,
and thick clouds cover the peoples;
but upon you the LORD shines,
and over you appears his glory.
Nations shall walk by your light,
and kings by your shining radiance.
Raise your eyes and look about;
they all gather and come to you:
your sons come from afar,
and your daughters in the arms of their nurses.
Then you shall be radiant at what you see,
your heart shall throb and overflow,
for the riches of the sea shall be emptied out before you,
the wealth of nations shall be brought to you.
Caravans of camels shall fill you,
dromedaries from Midian and Ephah;
all from Sheba shall come
bearing gold and frankincense,
and proclaiming the praises of the LORD.
Responsorial psalm
(Psalm 72: 1-2,7-8. 1-13)
R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
O God, with your judgment endow the king,
and with your justice, the king’s son;
He shall govern your people with justice
and your afflicted ones with judgment.
R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
Justice shall flower in his days,
and profound peace, till the moon be no more.
May he rule from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
The kings of Tarshish and the Isles shall offer gifts;
the kings of Arabia and Seba shall bring tribute.
All kings shall pay him homage,
all nations shall serve him.
R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
For he shall rescue the poor when he cries out,
and the afflicted when he has no one to help him.
He shall have pity for the lowly and the poor;
the lives of the poor he shall save.
R. Lord, every nation on earth will adore you.
Reading II
(Ephesians 3: 2-3a, 5-6)
Brothers and sisters:
You have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace
that was given to me for your benefit,
namely, that the mystery was made known to me by revelation.
It was not made known to people in other generations
as it has now been revealed
to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit:
that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body,
and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
Gospel
(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 Christ 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.