Three years
ago, this time of the year, I was in Rome with the youth choir from St Richard
Church in Jackson. The youth
had the wonderful opportunity to attend an international choir convention there
in Rome, and to sing with the other choirs at the mass at St Peter’s basilica
with Pope Benedict. I remember
that before one of the masses we had, I was chatting with a couple of priests
from Monterrey, California. We were
discussing our assignments and how we served as priests. As they
described to me their rather affluent parishes in Monterrey, I described how
I served two counties in the Mississippi Delta. They looked
at me with shocked expressions on their faces verifying what I had just said,
“You serve two entire counties in the Mississippi Delta?” I thought
about how I had just been in Yazoo City for a couple of months when I had that
conversation with these two priests, how visiting several sick and shut-ins on
a Sunday afternoon would take several hours because of this isolated, spread out
area of the Delta. In fact, I
remember one afternoon when I was visiting someone way out in the country. It was down roads that were not really
marked, some unpaved. It was a difficult
place to find, and then when I left when it was dark, finding my way back to
Yazoo City was quite difficult. In fact,
at one point I thought I was following the road, and I accidentally drove into
someone’s driveway.
Whether we
are driving to a new location or whether we are trying to navigate life,
sometimes we lose our direction and need a sign. The Magi
had a sign as they traveled from afar to honor the Son of God born in a distant
land: the star guided them to exactly the right place. It wasn't
just any star that the Magi followed in their search: it was “his” star, the
star of the child Jesus. Isaiah
describes a darkness that separated the people from God's glory: the star's
light directed the Magi through this darkness. In the
midst of his chosen people, Israel, God revealed his glory. Isaiah
prophesied: “Nations shall come to your light, kings to the brightness of your
dawn.” Magi from a
faraway nation came to the light of Christ’s birth – a light that burned so
brightly in the midst of the earth's darkness.
The story
of the Magi visiting the baby Jesus is a beloved part of our Christmas
celebrations, but it's so much more than an enthralling story. Ultimately,
the story of the Magi has its deepest significance in what it tells us about the
early Christian communities and what it tells us about ourselves as modern
believers in Christ. The early
Church knew that the Magi were not Jews, that they did not have the Hebrew
Scriptures to provide them knowledge about the birth of Christ. However,
the Magi read the signs that God sent them. Perhaps the
gifts that the Magi brought don't seem appropriate for an infant, but the early
Church saw symbolism in them: gold for virtue, frankincense for prayer, myrrh
for suffering. These gifts
were meant for the baby who would be the Savior and Redeemer of the world. The journey
of the Magi - Gentiles from the East - and their homage of the Christ child,
told the early Church that salvation and redemption through Christ is open to
all. Today's
responsorial psalm response reflects the inclusiveness of God's offer of
salvation to all that is present in the story of the Magi: “Lord, every nation
on earth will adore you.”
The message
of the Magi still has meaning for us in the modern world. Pope
Francis, in his New Year’s message of peace, echoes the message of the
Magi. Francis
urges us in the new year 2014 to work for a world where
everyone accepts each other's differences, for a world where enemies recognize
that they are brothers. The Pope
tells us: "This brings a responsibility for each to work so that the world
becomes a community of brothers who respect each other, accept each other in
one's diversity, and takes care of one another.” That is the
journey we are on here on earth. We also
search out the reality of the Christ child in the midst of our daily lives as
we see Christ present in our brothers and sisters.
The story
of the Magi appeals to our imagination, but it does so in the midst of how we
are living out our lives of faith. We all
bring our own gifts, just as we bring our gifts to our multi-cultural and
multi-lingual mass celebration today. We don’t
bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to Christ today, but we're called to lay
down our own unique gifts at the feet of the baby Jesus: our talents, our time,
our riches, our love and our care for one another. We also
have stars in our own lives guiding us. We have the
Holy Spirit – we have our dreams and our prayers – and the ways we see Christ
in our world. Like the
Magi, our own journey of faith calls out to us to search for the Christ child
in the world. It calls us
to search for a mystery that we will never fully understand. Yet, like
the Magi, we continue to search, to wander, to wonder. For the mystery that we ultimately find is not
in some lofty ideal, or in a principle, or in a theory, but in the very person
of Christ, the same Christ who was born as a child in the manger in
Bethlehem.
No comments:
Post a Comment