Guiding safely home

Today’s readings: Isaiah 60, 1-6; Ephesians 3, 2-3.5-6; Matt. 2, 1-12.

It is not in religion’s nature to be inward looking, let alone of Christianity, which claims to have as its foundation God’s universal and infinite love as shown in Jesus born in Bethlehem. By nature, Christianity is ‘epiphanous’ . As Jesus said, “A city built on a hilltop cannot be hidden”.

Today’s feast is a call to ‘shine out’ in a world which, as much as it seeks to light up its dark nights, still has frequent blackouts on all counts.

Today’s narrative in Matthew on “wise men who came to Jerusalem from the east” is a wake-up call to all religious people to find their way back safely home in the lands of the spirit out of the land that gives more the feeling of being in exile.

It brings out the contrast between being knowledgeable and being wise. We can be so knowledgeable, just as the book people summoned by Herod were. But we seem to lack the wisdom that helps us have a good grasp of life and its meaning.

For so long we felt commissioned to evangelise the world and other cultures, with heroic missionaries dispersed around the globe to make known the love of God in Jesus, even if this love was not always the trademark exhibited. But now it’s time for a serious stocktaking of what is left to discern better where we are.

Leafing through what came out of the recent Synod of Bishops on the transmission of the faith in our times leaves much to be desired. We still seem too self-centered, we still feel threatened, perturbed, as Jerusalem was at the time of Christ’s birth which seemed more to be disturbing the peace rather than fulfilling a promise. We still find it hard to realise what Paul writes in the second reading, that: “pagans now share the same inheritance”. How can that be, unless they become like us?

This is precisely what always made us inward-looking: the conviction of knowing it all, of possessing the truth, and the presumption of wanting to bring that truth to everyone the way we thought best. Now we seem to be experiencing serious setbacks which call for humility, for deeper consideration of global reality, for more openness to let God be God without being patronising about Him and with others.

The scenario in the narrative from Matthew says it all: whatever happened that was really meaningful, happened outside the city of Jerusalem, and the ones who really grasped the depth of that eventful happening came from outside. So much is happening today in our whereabouts that is overwhelming and giving shape to our living, but that which seems to be less and less marked by the faith we claim to celebrate.

The culture we live in and which we breathe makes it so difficult for us to fall on our knees, to acknowledge God as creator, and to adore Him in truthful liturgies worthy of the name. The journey of the wise men actually ended up in a liturgy which crowned their searching.

That is what makes a liturgy truthful. Liturgies can so easily be a caricature and hence meaningless because they are unable to project what goes on in our spirit.

Epiphany today is calling for a return home, but, as with the wise men, from a different way. We cannot continue to do the same things the way we always did them. In Matthew, we have clearly defined what makes faith truthful and religion fake in a context of power and culture games. What transcends all this is the wisdom and guidance that come from above.

Religion is about wisdom, it has to do mostly with transcendence, it is focused on God, not on ourselves. Otherwise it becomes simply self-glorifying rather than seeking God’s glory.

The best articulation of the faith in times like ours is not to be found in theological disquisitions telling us who God is and what is right and wrong.

Faith is best articulated when it addresses the real queries in people’s hearts, when it lets itself be guided by God. Faith is a journey that starts from a distant land and that under constant guidance ends in adoration in the land of the spirit.