Solemnity of the Epiphany, Cycle A. Today’s readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

 

If there is one feast in the liturgical calendar that speaks powerfully to the “catholicity” of the Church and its mission, it is the Epiphany. This is because the word “Catholic” means, quite simply, universal, all-embracing. The events surrounding today’s solemnity celebrate that same universality: the fact that the divine child whose birth we joyfully commemorated over the past weeks came not to be the saviour only of the Jewish people among whom he was born, but as a light for all nations.

The Epiphany account in Matthew’s Gospel is replete with contrasts. Whereas Herod’s scribes and high priests possessed all the correct information about the location of the Messiah’s birth, they were unwilling to travel the few kilometres between Jerusalem and Bethlehem to seek and worship the newborn king. The Magi, on the other hand, pagan astrologers though they were, had invested all their resources and had spent entire months or years travelling thousands of kilometres in order to seek out and honour the infant king of a foreign nation.

Even the gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh that they present to the child Jesus and his mother are significant, though perhaps not very practical. Readers may be familiar with the joke that is often told around this time of year, speculating about what would have been different had wise women visited the Christ child, rather than wise men. As the joke goes, wise women would have asked for directions and arrived on time; they would also have helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, and brought practical gifts!

Yet the late, great, Pope Benedict XVI had this to say about their gifts during his Epiphany homily of 2010: “These are certainly not gifts that correspond to basic, daily needs. At that moment, the Holy Family was far more in need of something different from incense or myrrh, and not even the gold could have been of immediate use to them. But these gifts have a profound significance: ...they represent the recognition of a person as God and King, that is, an act of submission. They were meant to say that from that moment, the donors belonged to the sovereign and they recognise his authority.”

This announcement that God is offering salvation to the non-Jewish world, and the acceptance of this salvation by Magi representing the gentile nations, fulfils the prophecies of universal salvation contained in today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah. It also prefigures the end of Matthew’s Gospel where the Risen Christ exhorts his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations.

We would do well to approach this feast, therefore, with a healthy combination of gratitude and responsibility. Gratitude that we are recipients – if we so desire – of this gift of salvation; responsibility to not abuse or neglect this gift, for it calls us to conversion, to a new life. Like Herod’s court experts we are at peril of possessing correct theological information, but not allowing it to move, change, and thereby save us. The Magi show us that another way is possible and indeed necessary; in fact, they literally return “home by another way”.

We would do well to approach this feast with a healthy combination of gratitude and responsibility

Once again, in the profound words of Pope Benedict XVI: “The Magi could no longer follow the road they came on, they could no longer return to Herod, they could no longer be allied with that powerful and cruel sovereign. They had always been led along the path of the Child, making them ignore the great and the powerful of the world, and taking them to him who awaits us among the poor, the road of love which alone can transform the world.”

 

bgatt@maltachurchtribunals.org