Our celebration of the Christmas season wouldn't be complete
without the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord which we celebrate today. This part of the Christmas story so appeals
to our senses & our imagination:
Most of us can probably picture in our minds the Magi crossing the
desert on their quest to find the baby Jesus; we can also probably imagine the
smells of the exotic spices that they bring him as gifts. In many ways, the wise men are models for all
of the Gentiles who later became followers of Jesus, and that is why the witness of the wise men was
so important in the early Church. While
we have heard the story of the wise men from the Gospel of Matthew countless of
times during our Christmas celebrations over the years, I wonder what it would
be like for us to see the wise men from the perspective of a pilgrimage, to see
them as pilgrims on a journey. By seeing
the wise men as on a pilgrimage, we might be able to better understand
ourselves as a pilgrim Church and a pilgrim people as we journey through life
as followers of Jesus.
Just who were these pilgrims who we call wise men or
Magi? Scripture scholars think that they
were probably royalty, magicians, astrologers or members of a priestly caste
from Persia, which is the present-day country of Iran, or from elsewhere in the
east. They traveled from a faraway land,
guided by a star to lead them to this newborn king & to do him homage. Wow,
that is quite a pilgrimage they are on.
I wonder if the end point of the pilgrimage was what they expected:
finding a little baby lying in a humble manger, not finding a great king in a
castle or ruling over a powerful army.
And I see analogies between the pilgrimage taken by the Magi
to our pilgrimage as Christians, and also to a specific pilgrimage I personally
took to Spain to reach the cathedral that houses the remains of the Apostle
James, the son of Zebedee. I went to on
the pilgrimage in Spain back in the summer of 2003, and many of you know that I
am getting ready to go again this spring, as we will be leaving the day after
Easter this year.
I wonder how the Magi received their call to find Jesus,
this newborn king? Since God told them
in a dream to return to their homeland without reporting back to Herod, perhaps
he originally called them on this pilgrimage through a dream. God can call us to go on a pilgrimage in some
pretty unique ways. Some teacher friends
of mine from Maine were the ones who originally recommend that I go on this
pilgrimage to Spain, and they were not even Christian. Wow!
And then I actually had a dream about going on the pilgrimage in Spain,
and I knew that it was something that God really wanted me to do, so I went.
As I can't imagine what the long journey was like for the
Magi as they traveled across deserts and mountains, the terrain I encountered
during my pilgrimage to Spain was certainly interesting. As I hiked about 350 miles in northern Spain
to reach the city of St. James, Santiago de Compostela, I went over several large
mountain, through dry mesas, through remote rural areas & large cities, through heavy rain falls
and the blazing hot sun. What a journey
it was! And while I was a very
inexperienced hiker, I made the whole hike without even a blister, while my
friend who walked it with me, a very good athlete and a very experienced hiker,
had a nasty foot infection that bothered her from the very first day. And that's the thing about a pilgrimage – you
meet many unexpected, challenges along the way.
Only our imagination will help us know what the Magi really encountered
along their journey.
And there was that magical star that guided the Magi. The star certainly seems like a supernatural
gift from God, as it moved with the Magi along their journey, stopping over the
place where they would find Jesus. It's interesting that the pilgrimage of St.
James in Spain is also linked to a celestial body, the Milky Way. The pilgrimage route follows the same
westward direction as the Milky Way, and a medieval legend explains that the
Milky Way was formed by dust raised by the pilgrims walking across northern
Spain. Like the Magi following the star,
we pilgrims followed big yellow arrows that pointed us in the right direction
on the pilgrimage route.
I wonder what God taught the Magi from their
pilgrimage? I wonder if they remained
disciples of Jesus when they returned home?
Certainly, their spiritual outlook on life changed by their journey and their
discovery of the Christ child. It is
hard for me to put into words what I learned from God during my first pilgrimage
to Spain. First of all, I became much
more comfortable in listening to God in the silence and nature that I
encountered on the pilgrimage trail. So
often we come to God with a lot of requests & prayers; how often do we just
listen to him, to allow him to speak to us in any possible way. Finding God in giving up control is another
lesson I learned. We live in a society
where we plan, we organize, we schedule, we want to be in complete control of
things. Yet, on pilgrimage, I was never
quite sure how long I would be able to walk that day, where I would find a
place to sleep, or what kind of weather or detours would be along my path. Getting out of the daily routine, putting
ourselves in God hands: that is what pilgrimage is all about. And how often do we recognize the angels that
we meet in our daily lives? On
pilgrimage, I was so aware of the people I met that went out of their way to be
kind & to help me along my way.
These people were absolute angels to me, in both big and little
ways. I remember once when I was hiking
I felt someone’s hand come from behind me, rubbing my neck. And I thought: What is that for? It was a lady from Germany, who in her broken
English told me that she had seen that my neck was getting sunburned, and she
was putting lotion on my neck to protect it from the sun. This incident and others made me aware of how
I could be helpful to others in both big and little ways, and I went out of my
way to help the other pilgrims as well. And I can imagine that the Magi met many
people that helped them on their journey.
When I went to Spain, I went as a
pilgrim, not a tourist. That difference was very important. This meant that I viewed every step along my
journey through the lens of my Catholic faith and God’s call for me to be a
pilgrim. We all need to be open to the
way God speaks to us in our lives. And
God speaks to us in so many ways: through his Word & the teachings of the
Church, through the people we meet & the daily experiences of our
lives. But, as Herod, the scribes and
the chief priests were not open to become pilgrims, we have to decide if we are
going to open to the call to pilgrimage.
Are we going to be open to the deeper spiritual meaning present in the
way God is speaking to us? The Second
Vatican Council declared that we are a pilgrim Church, that we are a pilgrim
people on a journey to the eternal life that we will have in God. Like the Magi, are we really open to that
call to pilgrimage?
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