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Gospel Reflection 20070107

Compare your actions with your intentions.Temptations come our way so often that we may fail to notice them. Few are clear-cut choices between good and evil. Most concern little things, daily decisions about time, energy and money. We surprise ourselves when we don't have time or energy to help someone, to pray or to study a justice issue. Perhaps we have already given in to more tempting activities.

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January 7, 2007
The Epiphany of the Lord


GospelMt 2:1-12When 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 risingand 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 housethey 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.


Epiphany is a composite of two words: “epi” and “phano” meaning to shine forth, to let your light “bump up against” the world.

Today we celebrate Epiphany. Epiphany means to reveal, to show, or to make known. The enduring insight from the earliest days of Israel to our own modern Christianity is that God is not remote from us; God is actively involved…God cares…God is concerned.
On those mornings when we wake up, sit on the edge of the bed, rub our eyes, think of the problems we face, worry whether our life has any real meaning, and wonder if there is even really a God…God is present.
God is with us. Sometimes all we have to do is take the time to open our eyes and see…open our ears and hear…open our hearts and feel the presence. May we all see and hear and feel the epiphanies of God in our lives this day and in each day to come.
The visit of the Magi to the Holy Family is one of the most beautiful of the Christmas traditions. There is intrigue as the 3 Wise men foil Herod’s attempt to find and kill the child Jesus. Three powerful men travel many miles to pay homage to this babe and then offer him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. They also bring the warning that this young family must once again alter their plans. Finally, it is suggested they flee to Egypt to foil the plot of King Herod.
Matthew relates for us the story of the Magi that come to visit Jesus. This story has been embellished over the years. We normally think of them in terms of three wise men. We may even remember the names that tradition has given them: Melchior, Balthasar and Caspar. Scripture doesn't tell us that there were three men, nor does it reveal their names. We presume there were three based upon the presence of the three gifts.
Opportunities to Change
Basically, most people do not like change. We get really comfortable doing the same old thing.
In today’s gospel reading, we hear about Magi who left their familiar surroundings and journeyed to a new and foreign place where they found the Christ child. They were called to change, to leave the comfort of home, and be guided by a “star” or “light,” something beyond themselves. The Magi could be our patron saints. They didn’t have to travel but chose to do so. Their journey wasn’t just a physical one, but required a lot of inner change as well. What had been comfortable and “home” was no longer.
As a contrast, Herod is also in the gospel reading. And he wasn’t about to change. He was in charge and was planning to stay in charge. As king of the Jewish state, someone called the “newborn king of the Jews” threatened him and he wanted to find out where this Christ child was.
Like Herod, we can go through the motions, look like we are interested in doing what is right and seem to be discerning what God wants for us. But in reality, we like our situation quite nicely. It is hard to move out of the comfortable and make significant changes in our life patterns. However, like the Magi we must make changes and move on into the life ahead.
We must go with the calling of the Holy Spirit. Once we get comfortable in our new calling, he will be calling us to something new. We can’t be our old unchangeable self because life changes around us. God is calling us to somehow build up his kingdom. What is he asking of us right now?
King Herod is “greatly troubled” at the prospect of competition in his life. A jealous person fears a competitor whom they suspect will take away a good possessed. Envy desires the good that I lack but that another person possesses. If we are not attentive, this same sentiment can begin to grow in our hearts. Roots of envy and jealousy towards others grow silently and begin to grip our will while strangling our capacity to love unconditionally. Rather than unity, it sows discord and suspicion. We can even begin to look for ways to “bring them down,” not necessarily physically, but verbally, by assailing their character and exploiting their weaknesses when speaking to others. It eventually enters into our relationship with God: we become less and less generous with God to the point of being threatened by what he may ask me to do or to give up. Because of Original Sin, attitudes like Herod’s assail the heart of each one of us. Yet we do not need to consent to such temptations.
Matthew’s gospel explains how the prophecy of Isaiah comes to fulfillment through Jesus Christ. Wise men come from a distance to offer precious gifts to a new-born King of the Jews as a sign of their reverence for Him. In this new-born babe God is manifesting His glory in an act of power. But this act of power is, paradoxically, an act in which the new-born King presents Himself as being concerned with those who have no power. God’s providential control of events is manifested through the extraordinary means of the star and the dream.

Jesus leads strangers into our lives in many ways. Let us pray that we realize His mysterious plan for each of us, that we will recognize the goodness in other, that we will not be blinded by race, culture, skin color or different ways of praising God, but that we will have humble, open hearts to receive the gifts of others as we all journey to salvation.
The willingness of the Magi to follow the star should show us that we should also be willing to show that we are obedient to the call of God. We also have been called so that, within our possibilities, we can become faithful followers of Christ. The Magi traveled from afar just to be able to prostrate themselves before our King, our Savior, and the Hope of all nations. The Magi were guided by a star. We should be guided by the Church and by what the Church teaches since she will help us to obtain, through our own loyalty and strength, the grace to follow Christ.
Vatican Council II pictures us as a pilgrim people, wanderers and sojourners, people whose life is essentially a journey in quest of a holy place.
I like that picture of the Church because it seems to describe accurately what our life is all about. We never stay in one place. We cannot be complacent, thinking we have arrived. We are always on the move. Journeys of course are tiring and so we often become weary in our search. But journeys can also be exciting. Journeys require us to read the signs, to have a vision of where we are going.
Christmas has not come to an end yet, it continues until Sunday. Ordinary Time does not start until after mass next Sunday. Epiphany marks the end of Christmas season and the beginning of a renewed effort to “show forth,” for the entire world to see and witness, what it means to be a Christian.

The Epiphany comes through the star. And what comes from the star, of course, is light. We read in the Gospel today, “After the audience with the king they set out and behold the star that they had seen in its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the Child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star.” They followed the star. The star symbolizes truth. We never have to be afraid of truth. “The search for truth is the search for God,” said a great saint, Edith Stein. The constant search for truth leads to God. Truth by truth leads to the ultimate truth, Jesus Christ.
Edith Stein has beautiful words of wisdom for all of us: “The kings at the manger represent seekers from all lands and peoples…There lived in them a pure longing for truth that did not stop at the boundaries of native doctrines and traditions. Because God is truth and because he wants to be found by those who seek him with their whole hearts, sooner or later the star had to appear to show these wise men the way to truth. And so they now stand before the Incarnate Truth, bow down and worship it, and place their crowns at its feet, because all the treasures of the world are but a little dust compared to it.”
We, brothers and sisters, are called to stand before the truth, and reincarnate in our daily lives the living and incarnate truth, Jesus Christ. We may think that only saints have the grace to make God reappear. Epiphany invites us to reflect on the call to sanctity, to union with God, to translate Christmas epiphany into the other fifty-one weeks of the year.
The original Epiphany event introduced gift-giving to the Nativity story, not necessarily to the celebration of Christmas as we know it today. With the Wise Men comes the suggestion that we are called to a balance in our lives between matter and spirit. The material side is surely represented in their gifts, particularly the gold. The spiritual is also there. It is manifested first in their readiness to respond to divine direction, to follow the star.
It is also contained in the symbolism of the gift of incense (prayer, homage, respect) and myrrh (a gum resin with a bitter taste, prefiguring the bitter death this child would suffer). Perhaps through a better balance between what is material and spiritual in our contemporary Christian living, sanctity can become more evident in the world, thus allowing God to be seen a bit more clearly, to “reappear,” in a manner of speaking, in our community.

We now have the job of letting Him shine through us to others. That is saint’s work, and that is what we, as Christians, are called to do.
Christ, the light of our life, is “out there,” of course, in the world. But he is also within us. We have always been called to be setting out, as the Wise Men did, to find him. Ours is both an exterior and interior journey. We have been given a star to follow. The star is our vocation; it is visible in the circumstances of our lives, the circumstances that help us define or describe ourselves—as husband and wife, father or mother, son or daughter, single person, or consecrated person—whatever the circumstances of our calling; that’s our star, our vocation. It is a moving star because the God who calls never stops calling. We are invited to follow that call, that star, to find Christ our light, as the Wise Men did. And we find him only to pass him on, by word and example, to others.
As Christmas turns into Epiphany, and Epiphany reopens the door to “ordinary time” and ordinary life, we can consider once again our opportunity to be a saint, to let that little light of ours shine and brighten the many corners of our troubled world. “It is the saint who makes God reappear.”
In the incarnation, he became flesh. In the Eucharist, it is his risen flesh which becomes bread and wine by what is called transubstantiation, so that his flesh might be united with our flesh and ours with his. The Epiphany we recall today is but a foreshadowing of the true epiphany of the Holy Eucharist.
It is, then, to the Holy Eucharist that men and women of all times have, shall and must look to see the wonderful presence of Christ among us.
The question is whether or not we Catholics, to whom this treasure has been entrusted, do ourselves believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

How will the world enjoy Christ’s light if we are not its witnesses in and to the world? His light today comes through our witness.
Witness is not so much about dramatic actions or words.
Witness, rather, is about the dramatic revolution in our own hearts and consciences joyfully to accept that, unlike Herod, we are neither our own present nor our own future: we exist because of Christ and for Christ.
Witness is to draw others into the awareness of Christ alive and shining within us.
Witness is to have realized that Christ’s vision of who I am is the only real one, and that my own obscure and self-concerned vision of myself is little more than a shadow.
Witness draws dark hearts into the circle of the light and life of Jesus Christ.
Witness renders loneliness impossible because I live in the loving communion of Jesus and with all others who are one with him.
Please, do not think that this is impossible for you: not only is it possible, it has already begun in your baptism. Not only is it possible: without it, you cannot inherit the Kingdom of light.

Today’s Gospel gives us a blue-print of the differing reactions of the world to the Church, just as there appeared differing reactions to the new-born Christ-Child.
First, it shows us that, not only Israel, but the whole world in some profound way was awaiting the coming of the Messiah.
Second, it shows that God was faithful to His promises to Israel, despite Israel’s long history of alternate fidelity and infidelity.
Third, the Gospel highlights the contrast between worldly authority which submits to Christ and worldly authority which does not.

Today's homily is one that is so familiar, the setting so well known, that sometimes we don't look at what is there. Let's step back for a moment from the familiar and take a look at what the Church offers us for consideration.This Gospel is actually a summary of most of our Catholic teachings with regard to Christ. The wise men represent the Gentiles who are called to a relationship with Jesus just as the Magi were called by the star. The gifts they bring show an awareness of the person of Jesus. The gold is a gift to the king, the frankincense is a gift to God, and the myrrh is a recognition of the death and burial of Jesus.
The magi worshipped Jesus and gave him their most valuable gifts. What would be our most valuable gift that we could give to the newborn Jesus? I’m not sure that there’s a right answer, but I think that there is no greater gift we could give than the gift of ourselves. By giving ourselves, we become disciples of Jesus.
God reveals himself to us so we will be epiphanies for others! Like God revealed Jesus to the magi from other countries, we must reveal Jesus to people who do not know him. We must also reveal Jesus to other people who need to know him better, like our families, friends, and neighbors. I’m sure that all of us can think of people who are the face of Christ to us. We, in turn, must be the face of Christ to others.
Sometimes God reveals himself to us in the midst of the ordinary things we do.
Each of us has epiphanies. When we have one and God reveals something to us, we will have to make a choice to take a different road, like the maji did when they returned home. God is calling us to change our ways. Change is not easy, but God will continue to call us to change during our entire lives. He continues to call me to change. He never gives up on us. He wants us to say “yes.”

posted by Mike Young @ 6:36 AM