Being Overjoyed with the Wise Men

In 2005, I attended World Youth Day in Cologne with a group of young people from the Paulist “Mother Church” in New York. One of the World Youth Day activities (see photo below) was a pilgrimage walk to Cologne’s great Gothic Cathedral, which was originally built to house the supposed relics of the magi, who, as we just heard [Matthew 2:1-12] came from the east to do homage with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Entering our church today, you will have noticed an alteration in the nativity scene as the shepherds have been joined by the magi. (In the actual account, of course, the shepherds came and went on the same day and so were presumably long gone by the time the magi arrived.) 

In the United States, sadly, Epiphany 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, and it still ranks as one of the principal festivals of the Church’s calendar. In the Eastern Christian Churches, Matthew’s story of the magi is read on Christmas Day. Epiphany in the East is primarily a celebration of Jesus’ baptism, the beginning of his mission as an adult. Here in the West, we postpone the commemoration of Christ’s baptism until tomorrow, focusing today almost exclusively on the story of the magi.

The terms “magi” suggests that they were wise, learned men, maybe Zoroastrian priests, probably from Persia, perhaps astrologers. Beyond that, however, 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 the Gospel, has counted them as three, which in time came to represent the three then-known continents - Africa, Asia, and Europe - and the three ages of human life – youth, maturity, and old age).

Matthew’s Gospel tells us none of these things, but it does tell us what it is important for us to know about the magi. First of all, it tells us that they were foreigners, Gentiles, pagans. As such, they represent the majority of the human race – past and present – in a world in which (as we just heard from the Prophet Isaiah) darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples [Isaiah 60:2]. In other words, the magi had only human, natural knowledge, and sought, as Saint Paul said in his famous speech to a 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]. Pope Benedict XVI called the magi “forerunners, preparers of the way, seekers after truth, such as we find in every age.”

But the story also tells us that, whatever varied the paths that different people may start out on, our paths ought finally to converge in Jesus, the one and only Savior of the world, and that the interpretive key to the story of Jesus is God’s revelation of himself in the history of Israel. Thus, it was Jerusalem, Israel’s holy city, to which 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 prophesied in today’s 1st reading: 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. Perhaps the prejudices of their class caused the Magi to go directly to the king’s palace. Or perhaps they just stopped on every street and asked anyone who would listen. Either way, when Herod heard the Magi, he was greatly troubled and all Jerusalem with him. They were troubled, instead of being 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 their priorities. They may have sensed it better than many of us, who like Herod have become quite complacent in our way of life and quite comfortable with our possessions.

And then there were the scholars whom Herod consulted. They correctly quoted the scripture, but they didn’t get it either. It was as if they had an abundant academic knowledge of the subject, but lacked any real knowledge. 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 old liturgy, when these 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 – instead of letting it become just another interesting story with no real impact on our lives.

As for the mag themselvesi, we never hear about them again. We know only that they departed for their country by another way. Nativity scenes sometimes seem, so to speak, 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 put, any more 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.

Every January, after the holidays, we return, as we inevitably must, to our ordinary activities – at home, at work, 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 makes everything different from what it would otherwise have been.

Long before there were calendar raffles or funeral homes to print parish calendars, Epiphany became the annual occasion in the Roman Liturgy to announce the date of Easter and other important dates in the coming year. Having rejoiced at the revelation of Christ’s birth, the Church invites us to look ahead to the joy of his resurrection and to recognize how all of time and all of human history have been transformed by these events.

None of us, of course, can even begin to foresee what this new year, the year of our Lord 2018, will bring, whether for better or for worse. 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 them 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 and other way, which, like the magi, we are, all of us together, being invited to find and follow.

Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, January 7, 2018.

January

Happy New Year! Welcome to the Year of the Lord 2018!

This first month of the year, January (in Latin, Ianuarius), is thought to have been named after the Latin word for door (ianua) and/or after Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions in the Roman pantheon. The original Roman calendar consisted curiously of only 10 months – from March through December - totaling 304 days. Around 713 BC, King Numa Pompilius (successor of Romulus) supposedly added the winter months of January and February to complete a full year. At some point January replaced March as the first month of the Roman calendar, and each year came to be identified by the names of the two consuls, who took office on January 1. 

Although medieval calendars still followed the Roman fashion with twelve columns from January to December, during the Middle Ages March 25 was perhaps the most common date for counting the new year until January 1 became the unquestioned New Year's Day once and for all with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century (but in the English-speaking world only in the 18th century).

In the Christian calendar, January 1 is, of course, the Octave Day of Christmas, on which day, according to Luke 2:21, Jesus was circumcised and given his name. According to the Roman Martyology, on January 1, 404, Saint Almachius, was martyred by the gladiators for saying, "Today is the Octave of our Lord's birth; put an end to the worship of idols, and abstain from unclean sacrifices." In antiquity, the Octave Day of Christmas was celebrated as the feast of Mary's Motherhood. While the liturgy of the day retained its Marian emphasis, the feast changed its name over the centuries to commemorate either the Circumcision of Jesus or simply the Octave Day. The new (1969) Roman Calendar of Paul VI restored it as the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.

The liturgical highpoint of January is, however, the Epiphany, traditionally celebrated on January 6, but since the adoption of Paul VI's calendar transferred in the U.S. to the Sunday after January 1 (this year January 7). In our contemporary secular calendar, January 1 more or less marks the end of the holiday season, but Christian cultures have traditionally continued to celebrate at least until the Epiphany, which is in fact the oldest of all the liturgical feasts of the Christmas season. 

The eve of Epiphany (January 5) is the 12th Day of Christmas. But when Epiphany is anticipated or postponed do we get fewer or more Days of Christmas? And where Epiphany is largely ignored, do the "12 Days" disappear too?

For those who still follow the Julian Calendar, January 6 is December 24, Christmas Eve, and Epiphany doesn't come until Gregorian January 19. About 50 years ago, I had occasion to attend a January 19 Epiphany liturgy at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in New York. It was quite impressive, complete with baptisms. (In the Eastern Churches, Epiphany is the primary baptismal feast, as Easter is  int he Western tradition.)

The secular world takes little or no notice of Epiphany. But January has its own secular observances. Thus, the last Monday of January is observed as Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day!

(Photo: January from the famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, an early 15th-century prayer book, which is generally considered perhaps the best surviving example of medieval French Gothic manuscript illumination)

The Real "War on Christmas"

Sometime during the night of December 26-27, someone vandalized our parish Christmas Tree that stands outside our church. He removed all of the tree's lights and removed the 6 Christmas wreaths that adorned the entrances to the church. He obviously was not a thief. Nothing was stolen. On the contrary the lights and wreaths were left in a neat pile - almost as if in imitation (most likely unintended) of the burial cloths mentioned in the Gospel reading later that day at Mass. As a result, those coming to church to celebrate the Octave of Christmas and the Epiphany are being greeted by a bare tree and unadorned entrances.  (Inside, of course, the church remains fully decorated for the holiday, but with artificial trees and wreaths, which themselves suggest some of the many unfortunate compromises with which  modern life has afflicted our celebration of Christmas. Only the outside decorations were natural.)

The so-called "War on Christmas." which President Trump claims to be successfully fighting off, is largely a product of the fevered imagination of those who believe Christianity is being persecuted in this country. There are in fact threats to true religious freedom in our society, but what particular festive greeting is used in stores is of no ultimate concern to Christian faith but is relevant rather to the competing religion of commercial capitalism.

There are, of course, at least three different Christmases being celebrated this holiday season. There is the religious Christian Christmas, which begins on December 25 and continues through Epiphany. There is the familial Christmas, which may be for many what is most appealing and which, while rooted in both Christian and pagan folkloric customs, requires no real religious commitment from its participants. And then there is the greedy, capitalist, commercial Christmas, which seems to go on forever until Christmas itself. The prominence of that third Christmas is the holiday sun whose brightness gets reflected in the religious and familial festivities. Indeed, without the commercial holiday, the Christian Christmas would risk becoming just another little noted religious holiday - like All Saints Day.

But the omnipresence of the commercial Christmas and the universal appeal of the familial Christmas seem to have left little energy for the Christian Christmas, which has increasingly become the victim of our own minimalism. So not only is church attendance on Christmas declining, but the celebration of the rest of the Christian Christmas season is increasingly minimal at most. True the Octave Day of Christmas is theoretically still a holy day - at least when and where it actually still is (not, for example, in the United States in 2018). As for the Epiphany - the oldest of all the Christmas festivals, older even that Christmas Day itself - how many Christmas Trees are still standing in how many homes on January 6 (or whatever day Epiphany happens to get shunted off to in the United States)?

The bare Christmas Tree outside our church is a sad sight. Sadder still is the increasing bareness of the Christian religious Christmas, so seemingly weak in competition with its glittering rivals.

Wretchedly Rich

For Christmas, a friend gave me David Bentley Hart’s new precisely literal translation of the New Testament, about which I will have more to say at some later date. I mention it today because one of Hart’s apparent aims is to highlight how little resemblance he sees between the first Christians (to whom the New Testament was originally addressed) and subsequent generations of Christians “completely comfortable with material possessions.” Hart highlights how the New Testament, as he understands it, “condemns personal wealth not merely as a moral danger, but as an intrinsic evil.”

The evil which wealth does and its moral danger to its owners are all blatantly on display in the movie All the Money in the World, based on John Pearson's 1995 aptly named book Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty. (Actually, I think Painfully Rich would have made an even better title for the film, although All the Money in the World certainly makes the same suggestion. Better yet, with its alliteration, I prefer my own title Wretchedly Rich) The film tells the story of fantastically wealthy J. Paul Getty's reluctance to respond to the ransom demands of a group of Mafia kidnappers who abducted his grandson John Paul Getty III in Rome in 1973 (and eventually famously cut off his ear).

For those of us who remember that time and that incident, the movie may bring back other recollections of other violent events that likewise characterized that particularly troubled period. On screen, however, the violence of that time, while starkly present, recedes somewhat, and allows the film to focus on the terrible human tragedy that was the life and legacy of one famously greedy man and the harm his greed inflicted on others. Especially in this holiday season, when out culture revels in its acquisitiveness and greed, the lesson is even more especially poignant.

The fact that we know the outcome in advance may disappoint those seeking more crime-thriller suspense. Still It is a really great movie, starring Christopher Plummer as J. Paul Getty, Michelle Williams as his daughter-in-law Gail Harris, Charlie Plummer as John Paul Getty III, Getty's unfortunate grandson, and Mark Wahlberg as Fletcher Chase, a former CIA operative in Getty's employ who becomes Gail's adviser in assisting her to recover her son.

The Just Ruler and the Citizens who Follow in his Footsteps

Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen 

So begins the familiar carol, which we all know and which I for one happen to love. Since the legendary event on which the carol is based is supposed to have taken place today, on the Second Day of Christmas, the feast of Saint Stephen, the First Martyr, this seems as good an occasion as any to reflect a bit on that legend's lofty message about the role and responsibilities of a righteous ruler and the community he leads and about its model of inclusiveness that seems increasingly to elude our contemporary society. 

Saint Wenceslas (907–935) was Duke Wenceslas (Vaclav) of Bohemia, who after his martyrdom by his brother of Boleslaus (Boleslav) the Cruel, was widely acclaimed as a model of the medieval image of the just ruler, whose piety was expressed in his leadership of society. Although the actual Wenceslas was a Duke, not a King, Holy Roman Emperor Otto I (912-973) posthumously promoted him to rank of king, hence his title in the legend and the carol. While Wenceslas and the legend of his Saint Stephen's Day service were medieval, the carol itself is modern - composed by English hymn writer John Mason Neale in 1853 and set to the tune of a 13th-century spring carol Tempus adest floridum ("The time is near for flowering").

In five 8-line stanzas, Neale's carol retells a story of Wenceslas and his page going braving the harsh winter weather to assist a poor peasant on December 26. Although it takes the form of a cheery Christmas carol, its message is a serious one.(Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing.) As such, it is thus also a challenge - as reflected in the page's difficulty in carrying on, a difficulty only overcome by literally following in the saint's footprints. 

As the Rite for the Coronation of a King in the pre-1969 Pontificale Romnanum and analogous texts made abundantly clear, much was expected of a just ruler. While the historical Wenceslas attained eternal glory by his martyrdom, the legend refers not to that but to his identification with and commitment to the poor as part of his righteous rule.

Christmas, the annual commemoration of the historical event of the birth of Christ, has become both our primary cultural celebration of capitalist acquisitiveness and greed and (somewhat more benignly) a family festival of domestic feeling. Above and beyond all of that, however, the true meaning of Christmas is not some nostalgic holiday pageant, for the baby whose birth we celebrate is not just some distantly ancient historical figure, but God-with-us, who challenges us to recognize and receive him in the here and now, in one another, and above all in the poor and the marginalized. 

The challenge to identify with the poor and the marginalized and to make their inclusion a social and political priority is highlighted in the legend of King Wenceslaus as a responsibility laid upon all in society - from the ruler who has to set the good example, to the ordinary citizen (signified by the page).

The medieval Church set a very high moral standard for the just ruler, conscious of how challenging and difficult that standard is. In contrast, our recent history has only highlighted the abandonment, on the part of too many who consider themselves Christians, of the traditional aspiration to seek and accomplish justice and inclusion through political governance and social policy.