5 January 2025 - Epiphany of the Lord
Is 60:1-6; Eph 3:2-3a.5-6; Mt 2:1-12
Homily
Matthew's Gospel is extremely sober about the birth of Jesus. In its first chapter, it begins by tracing the family tree of Joseph and therefore also of Mary, since they obviously belonged to the same tribe and the same extended family. Then comes the account of the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Joseph, telling him not to hesitate to take Mary as his wife. Then, in the very next chapter, the second, Jesus is ‘discovered’ by the Magi coming from the East, who offer Him royal gifts before returning home. The Gospel says nothing else about these people, and popular piety has continued to embroider and add details about them over the centuries.
Let us try to see what is essential in this account by the Evangelist Matthew. At the heart of the story is the child, with Mary His mother. The two are inseparable, both by blood and by mission. Joseph is not even mentioned; his humble role and his own mission were described in the previous chapter. He has the care and custody of the child and the mother, nothing more. This child, who is the Messiah that generations have been waiting for, is not recognized by the chief priests and scribes of the people who were waiting for him. King Herod, who wields the civil power of the oppressor, wants to kill this child, who is in danger of casting a shadow over him if the magi's fantasies have any basis in fact. The Magi, who have no names and come from faraway lands, adore this child and then return home. They were not naïve, however, for they were capable of perceiving Herod's ruse and avoided falling into his trap.
The Magi remain a model for today's researchers, as for those of all times. Researchers who don't play around trying to invent signs and symbols, but who know how to recognise the symbolic value of ordinary things. Seekers who are mad enough to abandon the security and comfort of their own countries and palaces to follow a star that is probably no different from any other.
They are not looking for a sign; they are looking for someone. When the sign is visible, they follow it. When the sign disappears, they seek information in another way. And when they reach their goal, the sign is no longer important. At no time do they adore the star. When they see it, they feel great joy. When it stops over a house, they go inside. And what do they find? Something as humble and ordinary as possible: a child and his mother. And what do they do? They knelt down and worshipped. Matthew's account seems to take pleasure in underlining the contrast between the extraordinary nature of the sign that led them to their goal and the ordinary nature of the reality they discovered and adored.
The Creator has placed the aspiration to encounter God at the heart of every human being. Religions can serve as stars, nothing more. They do not all have the same value, but none can be the object of worship and adoration. The only God who can be worshipped is the God who became a little child to become one of us and take us all on. Down the ages, people from every horizon have converged on Him, led by billions of different stars.
It is this aspect of the mystery of the Incarnation that we celebrate today.
The last sentence of this story is mysterious and undoubtedly has many meanings that we will never finish discovering. ‘ Warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their country by another route ‘. In the Bible, a dream is never just a dream. It is a spiritual experience through which a person discovers God's will for him or her by entering deeply into himself or herself. Just as it was not by reading Jewish writings but by contemplating the starry sky that the Magi learned of the Saviour's birth, so it was through an experience of interiority that they perceived Herod's falseness and would henceforth continue their journey without concern for ancient Israel, returning to their own countries, their own cultures and their own spiritual experiences, bearing the personal discovery they had made of the Salvation brought by God to all nations.
These Magi were not members of a religious sect on a spiritual quest. They were simply human beings, interested in the mysteries of nature, interested above all in human nature; who, in their observations of the stars, had believed they perceived the birth of a new king in a very small people, the Jewish people. They were not looking for the Messiah, of whom they probably knew nothing. They were simply looking for a new-born king. When they find him, they pay their respects and leave. This was probably their only contact with Jesus. They did not become his disciples. They were upright, honest and sincere men. Salvation is for such people.
God did not wait for us to rise to the occasion before entering into dialogue with us. He sent us His Son, His Word, even though we were sinners. In the same way, He asks us to reach out to everyone around us, whether they come to us or not, whether they like us or not, whether they have the same ideas or not. He also asks us to respect every human being - simply because they are human - whether they have a different religious affiliation from us, or even none at all, and whatever crimes they may have committed or been accused of.
Before being believers or atheists; Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant; Christian or Muslim, Sunni or Shia; Chinese, Japanese or Western; men and women are first and foremost ‘human beings’ created in the image of God and equally worthy of the deepest respect. This is what God wanted to teach us by making himself one of us.
Armand Veilleux