A young, humble mother, a strong, silent husband, shepherds, and animals giving way to three men, varied in age and race, bearing gifts and paying homage to a newborn child wrapped in rags and lying in a crib shabbily constructed with nothing but hay and straw as padding.
The scene has become etched in our minds. It is remembered and portrayed even before our annual celebration of the birth of the child Jesus. Nativity scenes decorate homes and yards shortly after Thanksgiving but methodically disappear soon after our gifts to each other have been offered and received. Our Gospel puts before us today that vivid scene of the three men, reminding us that it is not yet time to pack away the import of God’s gift of breaking into our world to be like us, to take on our human nature so that we have a chance at the divine.
The Magi, astrologers by trade, in the course of their work, saw a star of such magnificence that it could only mean the divine was communicating something extraordinary. The star’s appearance was so stunning that these three wise men, unsure of what they would find, were motivated enough to begin a long journey with gifts for a newborn king.
In contrast to Herod, the earthly king, their desire to search for wisdom, truth, and light was not to eliminate the source but to share in it. Through his self-concern, Herod was threatened and would do whatever he could to extinguish the light in his feeble attempt to retain his power. Wisdom and truth were irrelevant in the mind of a man who thought himself to be the arbiter of good and evil.
Two distinct approaches, two distinct replies. The Wise Men were open to the possibility that God was speaking to them, and his action through the star would forever change how faithful people encounter the divine. The long-awaited Messiah would rule over all people, the chosen ones and Gentiles. Humanity would be drawn to the truth even if first manifested in a newborn infant.
On the other hand, Herod represents those in the world threatened by the truth so that their evil deeds can be kept silent. The truth and the light become the aggressors for these types, for they are not concerned with attaining wisdom but with holding on to power. Their fear is the truth will topple them from the lofty earthly positions they have worked so hard to acquire. The difference is simple: the Magi know there is something greater than themselves, and the Herodians think wisdom and truth emanate from themselves. The great lie that you can be like God still ripples through history. To this day and at this very hour, flawed people think they can live better lives without God than with him.
For the most part, humanity today follows the example of the Magi or Herod. One is to view life and truth as a great gift from God, and the other is a stumbling stone directly affecting their freedom. Those who refuse to see a fetus in the womb as nothing more than a bunch of cells causing great harm to one’s freedom choose Herod’s method of dealing with the situation.
Suffering is also something that cannot be tolerated, so the answer is to kill a person, claiming erroneously that the killing is motivated by mercy and a person’s right to know the day and time of their death, effectively taking the decision away from God.
Young people who need more counseling than action about who they are in an attempt to destroy their gender with the hopes of living in the truth have not followed their star of grace and come to the stable, worshipping wisdom and truth itself.
For the rest of us, the danger is not that we follow Herod’s lead in actively and maliciously seeking to eliminate Christ from the world. Instead, the danger is that we become blind or too busy to observe the bright light from the east. After Christmas becomes a faint memory, we may settle too comfortably into our everyday routines.
It becomes more challenging for us to see the light and even more difficult to follow a path of uncertainty. We are called to be attentive to God’s light shining in our eastern sky regardless of whether it is Christmas or not. God wishes to communicate with us through prayer and events in the upcoming year, which will be our epiphanies. To do so means we must be attentive to what God wants to reveal to us in the coming year.
And when he does, we need not bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but just ourselves, which is a more excellent gift than those.