Epiphany "B"

EPIPHANY OF THE LORD  "B"

Cycle “B”: Mathew 2, 1-12
Introduction: Epiphany means manifestation or testimony. Love calls forth love, and love is expressed in gift-giving. The Magi’s gifts were the answer to love’s testimony borne by Jesus. On beholding the love of the Father, the wise men didn’t engage in academic discussion. They simply worshipped, and did what was humanly spontaneous  -  they offered gifts.
Let us offer our hearts, however broken or sin-laden, that God may transform them into something beautiful for Jesus. (My God! Transforming my sin-laden and broken heart into something beautiful? Yes, God can do the humanly impossible thing, if we allow him. I surrender myself to him to do with my brokenness and sinfulness whatever he pleases).
The Homily: When we read of the Magi in the first twelve verses of the 2nd. Chapter of Mathew’s Gospel, we are really reading our own story, the story of our own pilgrimage. Led by the star, these astrologers from far-off Persia struggled through rough terrain and successfully asked their way through indifference and politics until they found the Child they could worship. It is our history that we read there. Or, better, it should be our history. We are on pilgrimage, with no fixed abode; we are continually changing as time flies and the days wind down. We set out as soon as we are born and never return to the old places. And the journey’s path moves through childhood, through youthful strength and through the maturity of age, through a few festal days and many routine weekdays. Our journey moves through heights and through misery, through purity and through sin, through love and through disillusion. We go on from the morning of prime to the evening of death.
As each one is placed in a procession, does he or she dare to consult God’s mind where the procession is really heading? Do we actually look to find a goal on this journey, since our secret heart knows that there is a goal, however difficult and long the road may be? Have you emerged from the darkness of nothingness only to sink back into it? Do you think that the God you worship will expose your life to blank futility? A waste of time and effort? Do we run the course only to lose the way in the end? Is there any law of the road we can follow despite the cynical people who tell us there isn’t and that it is all one great scam?
We know that God is the goal of our pilgrimage. The free spirit of man finds only what it looks for. And God has promised in Jesus that he lets himself be found by those who seek him. One step for man, and a giant leap for God. Crawl one inch towards him and he rushes a thousand miles to meet you, eye to eye, heart to heart. If Epiphany means revelation, then we are dealing with a God who wishes to reveal himself, who labours constantly and complexly in his relationships with us. He is always tossing down clues and invitations, and introductory notes here, there and everywhere like an ambitious hostess: a God who yearns to be loved and known and engaged with. And since his revelation is deep and complex and mysterious and scary, he appears as a sweet little helpless infant.
So the Wise Men have set out, their feet pointed toward Bethlehem, yearning for salvation and thirsting for righteousness. They see a strange star rise in the East, and God in his kindness allows their primitive astrology to succeed this once, because their simple hearts did not know any better. And they teach us that to live successfully means that we are always changing, and that perfection means passing through many levels of change: intellectual, emotional, spiritual. Success also demands tenacity. The wisdom of the three travellers led them to look at the obvious place, the royal palace of Herod, only to turn up a blank. Yet they had the tenacity to keep searching and finally to arrive at their unlikely destination. We should not become discouraged if God seems to elude our grasp even when we look in all the places we feel he should be.
So let us also step forth on the adventurous journey of the heart to God! The whole future lies before us, every possibility of life still open, since we can still find the God of eternal youth. Yes, even in our time there are people like the scribes of Jerusalem who know the way to Bethlehem but do no go there; or, like king Herod, who find the good news of the Messiah inconvenient for their political plans; people who remain sitting at home with the sullen worldly wisdom of their narrow hearts. That could happen to us. Unsatisfied with the abundance of God’s gift of life, we always want more. We create a culture of greed and consumerism in our land of plenty, and this in turn leads to “an economy of theft, an economy of starvation.”
Set out now. Let your heart bestir itself; the praying, yearning, shy but honest heart, the heart well-versed in good works, the heart that believes and does not become soured, the heart that considers the folly of goodness to be more sensible than the cunning of egoism, the heart that lovingly allows its guilt to be forgiven, a royal heart, indeed.
PRAYER: Lord God, the gift of your Son to me was given in perfect love, and the gift has also to be received in perfect love.
Lord God, I realise that on my pilgrimage to you the star of faith still shines. I can’t take much with me on this journey, and I will lose much on the way. Let it go. But I still have with me the gold of love, the incense of yearning, and the myrrh of suffering. With these alone I shall find you.