En Route with the Magi

In 2005, I attended World Youth Day in Cologne. The great Gothic Cathedral in that city was originally built to house the supposed relics of the magi, who came from the east to do homage with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. [Matthew 2:1-12], and whose relics Cologne acquired from Milan in 1164.

The commemoration of the arrival of the magi on Epiphany typically produces an alteration in the nativity scene, in which the shepherds are now joined by the magi. (In the actual story, of course, the shepherds had left already on Christmas day and so were obviously long gone by the time the magi might have arrived.) 

Sadly, here in the United States where discarded Christmas trees already litter many of our streets, Epiphany (if noticed at all) now seems almost an add-on or some sort of vestigial postscript to Christmas. Historically, however, Epiphany is actually the oldest festival of the Christmas season, older even than Christmas Day itself. Traditionally, it ranked right after Easter and Pentecost, and (although now outranked by the historically more junior feast of Christmas) it still ranks as one of the principal festivals of the Church’s calendar. (Calling Epiphany "Little Christmas" is certainly better than ignoring it completely, but it really reverses liturgical history and in its own way may risk trivializing further this once-great festival.)

Here in the West, we focus primarily on the Magi. But as the famous antiphon at Vespers proclaims: Three mysteries mark this holy day: today the star leads the magi to the infant Christ; today water is changed into wine for the wedding feast; today Christ wills to be baptized by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation. The photo above, from an old Missale Romanum, likewise highlights the three Epiphany mysteries - portraying the magi n the center, but flanked by Cana and the Baptism in the Jordan.

(In the Eastern Christian Churches, where Matthew’s story of the magi is read on Christmas Day itself, Epiphany is primarily a celebration of Jesus’ baptism, the beginning of his mission.) 

Of course, we really know next to nothing at all about the magi themselves – not their names (although tradition has given them the familiar names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar), nor their exact social status (though tradition, inspired in this case by Psalm 72, has crowned them as kings), nor even their number (though tradition, based on the gifts itemized in Matthew's Gospel, has counted them as three, which over time came to be interpreted as representing the three then-known continents (Africa, Asia, and Europe) and also the three ages of human life (youth, maturity, and old age). Now that I am in the last of those ages, that interpretation resonates with me in a whole new way!

But, while Matthew tells us none of those things that we would so much like to know about the magi, it does tell us what it is actually important for us to know about them. First of all, it tells us that they were foreigners - Gentiles, that is, pagans. As such, they represent the majority of the human race – past and present – in a world in which darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples [Isaiah 60:2]. The magi were armed with human, natural knowledge, as they sought - as Saint Paul said in his speech to his pagan audience in Athens, the God who made the world and all that is in it and gives life and breath to everyone [Acts 17:24-25]. In his wonderful little book about the birth of Christ as recounted in the Gospels, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that the magi “represent the inner dynamic of religion toward self-transcendence, which involves a search for truth, a search for the true God.” He called the magi “forerunners, preparers of the way, seekers after truth, such as we find in every age” (pp. 95-96).

But human, natural knowledge - itself a divine gift in the order of creation - is limited and can take us only so far. So next the Gospel account tells us that, whatever varied the paths that different people may start out on, in order to achieve fulfillment our paths must all finally converge in Jesus, the one and only Savior of the world, and furthermore that the interpretive key to the story of Jesus is God’s revelation of himself in the history of Israel.  As Jesus himself would later explain to the Samaritan woman, Salvation is from the Jews [John 4:22]. Thus, it was to Jerusalem, that the magi came to learn the full significance of the star – a meaning revealed in the Jewish scriptures, which translated the natural light of a star into the revelation of a person. As Isaiah had prophesied, Nations shall walk by Jerusalem’s light, and kings by her shining radiance [Isaiah 60:3].

By way of warning, however, the story also illustrates how easily we may miss the point. When Herod heard the Magi, he was greatly troubled and all Jerusalem with him – troubled, not overjoyed like the Magi! What troubled them? What made such good news seem to them like bad news? The same Christmas star that filled the magi with hope somehow seemed like an evil portent to those who somehow sensed the threatening challenge it posed to their power and priorities.

Commenting on Herod's reaction Saint Quodvultdeus (a 5th-century bishop of Carthage who died in exile in Naples c. 450), observed: "To save his kingdom [Herod] decides to kill [Jesus], though if he would have faith in the child, he himself would reign in peace in this life and forever in the life to come" [Sermon 2 on the Creed]. What a lesson in the folly of our ruling ethos of power, domination, and control! 

But Herod was hardly alone in missing the point. The scholars whom Herod consulted correctly quoted the scripture, but they didn’t get it either. It was as if they had an abundance of academic knowledge of the subject, but lacked any real wisdom. So none of them did the obvious thing – go to Bethlehem and do Jesus homage. Only the pagan magi did!

Talk about missing the opportunity of a lifetime!

The magi, on the other hand, were overjoyed, not troubled. The magi set out as true pilgrims – and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother … prostrated themselves and did him homage. In the traditional liturgy, when those words were read or sung in the Gospel everyone was directed to genuflect. It was the liturgy’s way of physically bringing the point of the story home, helping us to identify personally with the pilgrim magi. Undoubtedly such practices catechized more effectively than many a homily, and their abandonment has been an evident loss for the Church.

As for the magi, we never hear about them again. Fictional accounts abound, of course, but all we really know is that they departed for their country by another way. Nativity scenes sometimes seem, as I have often observed, frozen in time. Everybody stays stationary – at least until it’s time to put the figures all back in the closet. But the real magi didn’t just stay there in Bethlehem, anymore than the shepherds did. They went back to wherever they had lived before, but they departed for their country by another way. They went back to whatever they had been doing before, but they would never be the same again. And, thanks to Christ’s coming into our world, we too must be different now from what we would otherwise have been.

At World Youth Day in Cologne in 2005, one of the activities was to make a ritual pilgrimage to the cathedral, to the magi's shrine. Having imitated the magi in the first part of their journey, the rest of life, it seems to me involves returning to daily life, as they did by another way.

Every January, after what we whimsically call "the holidays," we return, as we inevitably must, to our ordinary activities – at home, at work, at school, whatever and wherever. Like the magi, however, our challenge is to travel through our ordinary life by another way, because something so special has happened that has made everything so very different from what it would otherwise have been.

Long before there were funeral homes to print parish calendars, Epiphany became the annual date which the Roman Liturgy assigned to announce the date of Easter and other important dates in the coming year, a custom which, unlike the genuflection during the Gospel, has not been abolished and in fact seems to be enjoying a bit of a revival.

None of us, of course, can even begin to foresee what this new year of our Lord 2017 will bring, whether for each of us individually or for our confused and troubled world. Yet, even as we navigate our way through an uncertain and challenging present, the Christmas star invites us to travel with the magi – to go on pilgrimage with then to Bethlehem and back again – confident that, whatever else may be the case, the Christmas star will precede us to illuminate every new day of this new year, and so will guide us, first, to Christ, and, then, thanks to Christ, on that new way, which, like the magi, we are, all of us together, being summoned to find and follow.

On the 13th Day of Christmas

One of the many oddities of our contemporary liturgical calendar - at least for Catholics in the United States - is that the Epiphany this year will be celebrated two days after its true date - on January 8 instead of today. So, in effect, yesterday's "12th Day of Christmas" was not really the last "Day of Christmas" this year. The calendar reform has given us this year an additional 13th and 14th Days of Christmas, today and tomorrow!

So, in the spirit of the classic carol, what gifts should be given on these extra days? For today, this "13th Day of Christmas," might one suggest calendars (with the proper date of Epiphany marked on them)? 

On the 13th Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 13 calendars-a-counting,  ...

Any suggestions for tomorrow's "14th Day of Christmas"?

(Photo: The Journey of the Magi, by Stefano di Giovanni, 15th century)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Usually on New Year’s I like to start with what the late comedian George Burns once wrote in The New York Times: “Growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I always looked forward to New Year’s mainly because it was the only thing we could afford that was really new. And we always believed that things were going to get better during the New Year.”

Someone suggested recently that, if nothing else, the end of the year means that the election is finally over! 

Of course, the election may be over but its consequences, whether for good or for ill, will be with us for a long time. And one of those consequences is that next election campaign will begin soon enough!

New Year’s – especially the run-up to the end of the old year – lends itself to both nostalgic and serious reflections both about the state of the world and about one’s own life, about where one has been so far and where one may be headed in whatever time may yet be allotted. But New Year’s, as George Burns’ comical comment reminds us, is, by definition, something new, a gift freely given us that offers an opportunity for hope.  So election anxieties aside, however we approach the beginning of a new year, hope – like that which George Burns expressed growing up - ought to be a part of it.

To be sure, for all our holiday cheer, many of us may be marking the end of a very difficult and challenging year by looking ahead to 2017 with more than a little anxiety. It’s not for nothing, after all, that we pray every day at Mass that we may be safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  

But, if our distress and anxiety as we begin this new year are real enough, so too must be our hope, the hope we all share as Church, the hope we have been proclaiming this Christmas season, and on which we must all rely in all things and at all times, all the year round: the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Our hope is founded and focused on Jesus Christ, the one whose birth 2000+ years ago is the very basis for the calendar change we mark today. When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman – Mary the Mother of God and the Mother of the Church. He was born under the law – that is, he was a member of the Jewish People, circumcised on the 8th day of his earthly life, in fulfillment of God’s covenant with his Chosen People. God’s showing up in the world in Jesus – born to a particular mother, of a particular nation, in a particular place, at a particular time in human history – has realigned all of time and given all of history a new and more hope-filled meaning, giving us a hope for the future which we would never otherwise have had.

That future is what challenges us today. It is the challenge – as Pope Francis has said in his New Year’s message to the world – “to apply the Beatitudes in the exercise of [our] respective responsibilities. It is a challenge to build up society, communities and businesses by acting as peacemakers. It is to show mercy by refusing to discard people, harm the environment, or seek to win at any cost.”

Time has always been very precious – precisely, I suppose, because we have only such a limited supply of it. By becoming part of our time, however, God has turned our limited time on earth into a time of unlimited opportunity. So today he invites us to receive this new year – this year of our Lord 2017 – with gratitude as his gift and to enter it not in fear or anxiety, but ready to respond to the challenge of the future with the hope that counts as one of God’s greatest Christmas gifts to us.         

Homily for the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, New Year's Day, January 1, 2017.

On Giving Thanks for a Problematic Year

The year 2016 was not one which many will look back on with great gladness. Some may even shudder at the mere memory of it! Yet it is a venerable tradition to recite the great hymn of thanksgiving, the Te Deum, to give thanks on this last day of the civil year - and then to invoke the gift of the Holy Spirit by reciting the hymn Veni Creator on the first day of the new year imploring divine assistance for the whole of the coming year. 

Especially after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it would be hard not to be gloomy about the present or anxious about the future. And, as if that weren't sufficient, in Naples on December 16 San Gennaro's blood failed to liquefy! The miracle of the liquefaction of San Gennaro's blood is believed to occur three times each year - on the Saturday before the first Sunday in May, on September 19 (the saint's feast day), and on December 10 (the anniversary of a 1631 eruption of Mount Vesuvius). It did liquefy on the appointed days earlier in the year, but not on the third. In traditional lore, its failure to do so portends possible disasters in Naples. (20th-century failures of the blood to liquefy were associated with World War II, a cholera epidemic, and an earthquake.) 

In response to the miracle's non-occurrence, Monsignor Vincenzo De Gregorio, the abbot of the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, said: "We must not think about disasters and calamities. We are men of faith, and we must continue to pray."

In a similar vein, decades ago, the esteemed Pius Parsch, reflecting on the close of the year, wrote: "the world of today advocates a living just for the moment. Such living is altogether too individualistic, too selfish, too much a petty clinging to bubbles, too hectic a higgling and haggling for money and praise - things that are of time and pass away. Let time march on as you lose yourself in the timelessness of the Church, as you close yourself more perfectly with ageless liturgy."

And so we must, as this terribly tragic year ends and another of unforeseen prospects awaits us!

(Photo: Pope Francis gives the Eucharistic blessing at Benediction after the New Year's Eve Te Deum in Saint Peter's Basilica, one year ago.)

A Century Ago: A Coronation in Budapest

Exactly 100 years ago today, Blessed Kaiser Karl (Emperor Charles I of Austria and King Charles IV of Hungary) was solemnly crowned King of Hungary in Budapest. It turned out to be the last time the Holy Crown of Saint Stephen would be placed on a Hungarian monarch's head. (At least the Holy Crown itself survived the disastrous 20th century, even if its kingdom didn't. It is now on display for all to see in Budapest, where I visited it in October 2001.)

In The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill wrote about the fall of the Hapsburg monarchy: "For centuries this surviving embodiment of the Holy Roman Empire had afforded a common life, with advantages in trade and security, to a large number of peoples none of whom in our own times had the strength or vitality to stand by themselves in the face of pressure from a revivified Germany or Russia. There is not one of these peoples or provinces that constituted the Empire of the Hapsburgs to whom gaining their independence has not brought the tortures which ancient poets and theologians had reserved for the damned."

Poor Kaiser Karl found himself - less than two years after his coronation - cheated out of both his crowns. After two unsuccessful restoration attempts in 1921, he died in impoverished exile in Madeira the following year. But the tragic history of the 20th century has been more than sufficient to rehabilitate both his personal reputation as a statesman and peacemaker and the reputation of his House and its onetime empire. 

In the aftermath of an even more terrible Second World War (which, as Churchill suggested, might never had happened had the First World War been ended better and European institutions like the Hapsburg monarchy not been deliberately destabilized by that war's winners). the Archdiocese of Vienna introduced Kaiser Karl's Canonization Cause in 1949. He was beatified by his namesake Pope Saint John Paul II (whose name was also Charles, Karol) on October 3, 2004. That Pope lauded him as a Christian statesman who daily confronted the challenge of "seeking, recognizing, and following God's will in all things." Since then, a second miracle attributed to his intercession has been officially recognized. So we may hope to see his eventual canonization.

Meanwhile, may this melancholy anniversary serve as a salutary warning to the 21st century not to continue the disastrously rationalist, secularizing direction of the 20th century!