Month: January 2010

“They saw…they came…they worshipped”

It may be, as someone recently remarked to me, that had the wise men been women, they would have gotten there on time and presented more practical gifts! Yet the gifts of the Magi have another purpose. They are profoundly symbolic: “sacred gifts of mystic meaning”, as one of our hymns puts it. In short, they are gifts that teach. Both the gifts of the Magi and the journey of the Magi wonderfully illustrate something of the nature of the Epiphany.

Epiphany marks at once the beginning and the end of Christmas. With the story of the coming of the wise men from the east who brought gifts to the child Christ, it seems, thereby breaking-in to Bethlehem, Christmas is omni populo, for all people – and so there is the beginning of Christmas for the whole world. But with the break-out from Bethlehem which Epiphany also signifies, there is a new and different focus. There is a journey, both a journeying to Bethlehem and a journeying from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. And yet, the deeper meaning and significance of God with us is the critical lesson in the journeying from Bethlehem. Something of Bethlehem continues with us.

The mystery of God with us is the mystery revealed, the mystery made manifest. Epiphany is more than a day and a season. It signals a doctrine – a teaching. Indeed, the teaching that it signals is the teaching of God – God making himself known to us through the conditions of our humanity; God teaching us something about what he wants and seeks for us. We are opened out to the mystery of God with us. We are taught something about what belongs to the truth of our humanity from within the conditions of our brokenness. We learn, it seems, even from the little ones.

Christ is God’s “great little one” to whom the great of the earth – kings in their power and the wise in their wisdom – “come and worship”. The mystery of Christmas cannot stay hidden in some remote corner of the world; it must needs break out from the confines of little Bethlehem. In the coming of the Magi from afar (they are the prototypical come-from-aways!) the whole world in its desiring to know is understood to have its place and its fulfillment in this story.

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“Of his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”

There is a rich fullness to Christmas, to be sure. We have had, perhaps, our fill of Christmas in too much eating, too much drinking, too much feasting, too much partying, too much snow, too much everything; even, it may seem, too much Church! (And, perhaps, for some both near and far, too much Curry!) There is, indeed, a rich fullness to Christmas.

It is something which one day cannot presume to capture nor that even twelve days with all the festivities of our social, family and communal gatherings can ever hope to exhaust. Such things belong, to be sure, to the rich fullness of this season, but only as attendant events. They circle about the central scene of Christmas. In a way, they are our poor attempt to capture something of the rich fullness of the Mystery of Christmas.

There is but one poor, humble scene of Christmas. It is the stable of Bethlehem. And yet, therein lies all the rich fullness of Christmas. That poor, humble scene contains a great crowd of scenes, a great gathering of Christmasses; in short, it opens to view a rich fullness of grace, even “grace upon grace”. There is more here, we may say, than meets the eye. It is altogether something for the soul. We are bidden to ponder the Mystery of the Word made flesh. The attitude of the Church is an essentially Marian attitude. “Mary kept all these things” – all these wondrous things that were said about the Child Christ by Shepherds and Angels – “and pondered them in her heart”. And only so can they come to birth and live in us.

There is the Christmas of the Shepherds, the Christmas of the Angels, the Christmas of Mary and Joseph and Christ’s holy birth, the Christmas, too, of Christ’s heavenly, eternal birth for “there was not when he was not”. And, shortly, there shall be the Christmas of the Gentiles in the coming of the Magi, without which, too, we would not have Christmas. For in their coming Christmas is “omni populo”, for all people. With the coming of the Magi, it is Christmas still and yet again. Christmas is more Christmas, not less, a richer fullness than ever we had envisioned. All come to Bethlehem.

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“His name was called Jesus”

What’s in a name? Everything. Something of the wonder and the mystery of words and names is startlingly before us on this Octave Day of Christmas. It is concentrated for us in Bethlehem. Strong words and names are proclaimed in the Scripture readings. Bethlehem is the place of words and names that speak beyond the confines of a stable and a manger. Bethlehem is the place where the Word made flesh is named and signified as Jesus. Such is the wonder and the mystery of this day.

The idea of the Word made flesh, it seems to me, challenges the all-too-easy nominalism and relativism of our culture, as if names were merely of our choosing and at our convenience and as if names and words convey no real meaning beyond what meaning we choose to give to them; in short, that words and names signify no reality. We are really only talking to ourselves.

Bethlehem shows us something more. It makes visible the astounding wonder of the unity of creation with the Creator and the unity of the whole of our humanity. Bethlehem speaks to the deep desires of human hearts and to the form of those desires in their contemporary complexity. What are our environmental concerns about except a yearning and a longing for some sort of connection with the world from which we have alienated ourselves by our technocratic exuberance and arrogance? What are our social and political concerns about except a yearning and a longing for peace and harmony, for true unity and respect for all the peoples of the world?

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