Epiphany

In the liturgical calendar currently in use in the U.S., the ancient solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord has been transferred to today from its traditional date (January 6). If anything, this unfortunate change, which regrettably comes across as a demotion whatever the intention behind it,  may further relegate Epiphany to a kind of post-holiday merely vestigial after-thought. After all, isn't Christmas (our weeks-long American consumerist capitalist extravaganza) all over already? Didn't it end when the stores closed on December 24 (if, that is, they even bothered to close)? 

Of course, contrary to our consumer capitalist calendar, Epiphany, a feast more ancient than Christmas, remains in theory one of the high points of the Christian calendar.

In August 2005, I attended World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany. The great Gothic Cathedral in Cologne (the architectural model for New York's Saint Patrick's Cathedral) was originally built to house the relics of the magi, who, according to the Gospel account read on this feast [Matthew 2:1-12], came from the east to do homage with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Those magic men the Magi

Some people call them wise

Or Oriental, even kings

Well anyway, those guys

They visited with Jesus

They sure enjoyed their stay

Then warned in a dream of King Herod's scheme

They went home by another way

 

So begins James Taylor's song Home By Another Way, about our friends the Magi.

Several Christmases ago, the British newsmagazine The Economist featured an interesting article on the Magi. Historically, there have been a lot of interesting, but ultimately unanswerable questions about those the Gospel calls Magi (which just means wise men). Because they were observing the movement of a star, the early Church imagined them as astronomers or astrologers – perhaps Persian Zoroastrian scholars. The Economist article cites a 4th-century account, according to which generations of such scholars had been watching for such a star on a mythical Persian mountain - starting with Adam himself, who had gone there in his old age with gold, frankincense, and myrrh he had somehow salvaged from the Garden of Eden! In the Middle Ages, the image of them as kings took over, suggested by both today’s familiar first reading [Isaiah 60:1-6] and the responsorial [Psalm 72]. The Gospel doesn’t say how many they were; but, based on the three gifts, three has seemed a logical inference. Over time, the “Three Kings” also acquired the now familiar names, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, of whom Balthasar eventually became identified as an African King – presumably from Ethiopia. The three also came to represent the three ages of humanity – Melchior an old man of 60, Balthasar a middle-aged 40, and Caspar a young 20-year old. According to a different Cologne tradition, the three were closer to each other in age. By then much older, the three reunited one year at Christmas, after which they each died on January 1, January 6, and January 11 respectively!

All that is just speculation, of course. The fact is that we really know next to nothing at all about the magi themselves – not their names, nor their exact social status (whether really royal or not), nor even their number.

The Gospel tells us none of these things, but it does tell us what it is important for us to know about the magi. 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 darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples [Isaiah 60:2]. The magi were armed, in other words, with only human, natural knowledge, which they put to good use and sought, as St. 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 book a decade ago about the birth of Christ, 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).

The story also tells us that, whatever many and varied the paths that different people may start out on, to get to where we ned to be our paths must all finally 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 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. 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.

And then there were those 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! (This reminds me of how many time my mother warned of the limits of book-learning unless accompanied by common sense!)

Talk about missing the opportunity of a lifetime!

The magi, on the other hand, were overjoyed, not troubled. The magi were probably also scholars, but they had 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, a gesture of which we are no deprived to no discernible benefit. In the old rite, that genuflection was the liturgy’s way of physically bringing the point of the story home, helping us to identify personally with the pilgrim magi.

As for the magi, we never hear about them again in scripture. 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, 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.

This is, I think, by far the more important meaning of the "new" in the new year. 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, we have been challenged to travel through our ordinary life by another way, because something so special has happened which makes everything different from what it would otherwise have been.

Long before there were printed parish calendars for general distribution, Epiphany became the annual date which the Roman Liturgy assigned for announcing the date of Easter and other important dates in the coming year.

None of us, of course, can even begin to foresee what this new year will bring, whether for better or for worse. If we didn't understand that before, this terrible pandemic has certainly fixed that for us forever! 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 way, which, like the magi, we have all of us together, been invited to find and follow. 

(Photo: World Youth Day Pilgrimage Way to the Cologne Cathedral's Shrine of the Magi, 2005.)