We Should All Be Magi

From the Catholic Liturgy for Epiphany Sunday, January 8, 2018. Gospel – Matthew 2:1-12. Theme: We Should All Be Magi. Today we celebrate a Christmastime feast that is second only to the Nativity of the Lord: The Epiphany, which is an ancient Greek word meaning “manifestation”, a moment of sudden enlightenment, a realization about the truth of something or someone. And so today we remember and rejoice in the fact that the Magi were given the light to glimpse into the reality of Who and What this Little Child in Bethlehem was.

This may not seem like an astounding thing to us 21^st century Christians who live in a global world and who live out our faith in a community of diverse people. But when Matthew was writing his gospel this was culture-shattering – and even scandalizing – news!  You see, Jewish law considered the Magi – and anyone who was a Gentile – to be unclean, sinful and unworthy of an intimate relationship with God. 

But today’s Gospel is telling us some good news!  It proclaims that all people from any nation are welcome into the Presence of God, even us sinners if we are searching for God with sincere hearts.  So, let’s take another look at this Gospel and see what the Holy Spirit wishes to teach us in the story of the Magi.

First, we see that the Magi are seekers, who leave the comfort zone of their lives to follow the star.  They experience a sign that God is communicating with them and they set out to discover what this means; are willing to go wherever it leads; to do whatever it takes to find the Newborn King.  Do we have that same sincere and eager desire to know God and his plan for our lives?  Are we willing to go to any length for the sake of our relationship with God?

The Magi are inquirers who act upon what they have learned.  They are humble and realize that they do not know all there is to know about finding God. They ask those who do know to tell them how they can find the Lord’s Messiah. Notice that Herod and the religious leaders know exactly where the Messiah is to be born, but they make no move to go there. They had the word of Scripture to guide them but they allow those words to remain just ink on a page. But the Magi give life to the Scriptures by hearing and doing. So, this might move us to ask ourselves: what is my response to the Word of God? Am I like the Magi who allow the Scriptures to give direction to my life and serve my relationship with God?

And once they find the Child, the Magi bow down in homage, they worship Him. They offer the Newborn King precious gifts, which symbolize what He means to us. Gold is precious in every culture. Incense is used by just about every religion for worship. And myrrh is an ancient embalming perfume used as a last respect for the deceased. 

But these gifts can also be symbols for us of our relationship with Jesus. They can remind us of what we must bring to Him today, and really everyday of our lives.  They gave Him Gold because He is King. We can give Him our hearts, our loyalty and obedience. We follow Him into the Kingdom of God. They gave Him Frankincense because He is God. We give Him our praise, adoration and worship, in daily prayer and especially at Holy Mass. They gave Him Myrrh because He is the Savior. We gratefully give Him our own lives in return, as daily living sacrifices of mercy and compassion to those who suffer in any way.

Finally, the Magi cherish their experience of God. In return for their sincerity and eagerness to find Him, the Newborn King gives them the gift of faith and they treasure it. They refuse to reveal the Child to Herod. Do we cherish our relationship with Jesus? Do we refuse to expose it to people, places or things that can rob us of this treasure by leading us to sin?

As we ponder this mystery of the Magi, let’s not forget the miraculous event that started it all: the Bethlehem Star, the symbol of the Light of Faith. And you know, our journey to Jesus also began with the light of faith given to each one of us at Baptism and symbolized by the baptismal candle we received.  And really that’s the heart of Christmas, of Epiphany and of every feast-day that the Church celebrates in her liturgy: that we follow the light of faith and are willing to take risks, to even leave comfort zones in our journey through life until we come to adore Christ the Lord for all eternity.

Roman Catholic (left) and Byzantine Catholic (right) Images of Mary the Mother of God of Tenderness

No Audio Homily for the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God. I forgot the recorder!

From the Catholic Liturgy for the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, New Year’s Day, January 1, 2018. Gospel – Luke 2:16-21. Theme: Mothering the Word in the New Year.

Today we find ourselves, as the recipients of two traditions: one religious and the other secular, but neither one opposed to the other: the beautiful solemnity of Mary, Mother of God and our Mother along with the secular celebration of New Year’s Day. The fact that a major religious feast and a very significant civil observance meet as one today is extremely fitting because for millennia, well at least until modern times, the human family has always seen an intimate connection between the human and the divine on New Year’s Day, between the worship of God and the good of mankind.

The ancient Babylonians (about 700-1800 BC) would make a resolution on New Year’s Day to their gods, pledging to return whatever they had borrowed from a neighbor and to pay any debts they owed to others.  The Romans, in Pre-Christian times, would make an oath on New Year’s Day to their pagan god Janus, pledging to seek social harmony and peace. As a matter of fact, this is why we call the first month of the year, January. Medieval knights would profess a vow as their resolution on New Year’s Day as a recommitment to their chivalry, to protect the kingdom and serve the people.

Besides being associated with religious worship – however that was understood and practiced – did you notice that the New Year’s Resolutions of the ancients were also social?  But somewhere along the way, once religion was ignored or even exiled from secular culture, New Year’s resolutions started to become all about the individual, all about ME.  But as Catholics we should see in todays’ double celebration a call to preserve and live the custom of a New Year’s Resolution that is NOT all about ME. 

Mary, Mother of God, is the perfect one to inspire us on this endeavor.  And a line from todays’ Gospel shows us how to go about doing this: “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” The Holy Spirit wants to do for us spiritually what He has done so uniquely and physically for Mary: He wants to make us mothers of the Word, giving the Word of God flesh in our everyday lives so as to bring Him to others. In praying and pondering over the Word, seeing how it can become the root of our New Years’ resolutions, we can make sure that it doesn’t remain just words on a page but gets life, becomes flesh, in our relationships with others.

In silence and prayer, Mary pondered the infant Jesus in his manger and all that was said about him by the angels via the shepherds.  And it is in the same spirit and practice of this silent pondering that we can best formulate our own New Year’s Resolutions with a heart like Mary’s.  Following our Blessed Mother’s example of whole-hearted dedication to Jesus, and knowing what we know now about his greatest teaching, which is the Commandment of Love, we should ponder our resolutions in the light of Jesus’ command that we love God first, others second and ourselves last. This is how we can give spiritual birth, living flesh and bone, to the Word of God in our lives today. We might ask ourselves:

·       How does my intended New Year’s Resolution promote a deeper relationship with God?

·       How does my Resolution help me in my relationships with those among whom I live, work and socialize?

·       And then finally, how does it help me to become the person God created me to be?

In a few minutes, we are going to have the Offertory, the presenting of our gifts to God through Jesus in the Holy Spirit. What a perfect time for each one of us to offer, along with these gifts, and by the hands and heart of Mary the Blessed Mother, our New Year’s Resolutions, asking God to bless them and make them holy.

We All Live in Nazareth

From the Catholic Liturgy for Holy Family sunday, December 31, 2017. Gospel: Luke 2:22-40. Theme: We All Live in Nazareth.

I’ve noticed that as the traditional 12 days of Christmas pass by, things are gradually starting to look and sound and smell rather ordinary again. The glamour and glitz of all the decorations on streets and in homes are being packed away. The holiday music is no longer being piped through the sound systems in the stores or at work. And except for the Epiphany, even our liturgy is starting to slowly wind down from Christmas to Ordinary Time.  Today’s Gospel is like that too. It starts out by telling us such awesome things about the Infant Jesus. All the miraculous interventions of that first Bethlehem Christmas seem to continue now in glorious temple of Jerusalem! Then it, too, winds down to the ordinary; to the life of the Holy Family in Nazareth.

And yet it is the simple uneventful conclusion of this Gospel that really strikes me to the heart most powerfully because it is where Jesus, Mary and Joseph begin to really touch my life. No heavenly angels proclaiming God’s praise to shepherds. No mystic magi following a miraculous star and brining precious treasures. No wise prophet or prophetess saying amazing things by divine inspiration.   Those things all belong to magical Bethlehem and to glorious Jerusalem.

But me, I am at home in Nazareth.  Nazareth stands for the ordinary everyday life.  Nazareth means living by faith not by miracles. Nazareth means going to work and earning a living; enjoying meals with family and socializing with friends. That’s where I live. That’s where we all live.  And most amazing of all that is where the Son of God lived for 90% of his life as a man. Nazareth is where we truly find Jesus our Savior as Emmanuel: God-with-us. God-among-us. God-as-one-of-us.  What does this say about ordinary life if God himself came down from Heaven to live it for 30 of his 33 years? What does it have to say about salvation? About living life so as to reach the Kingdom of Heaven? Because those are precisely the things Christmas is all about. I believe it says a whole lot about how we become holy, how we live the Gospel and become more like Jesus. 

Somewhere along the way we have gotten the idea that God is best loved and served by carrying out religious works. When someone decides to live their life for God, they think they have to go off to a convent or monastery, or perhaps travel to a Third World country in service to the destitute. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with those things if that is indeed what God asks of an individual. But for most of us, Nazareth shows us how wrong that way of thinking can be! Nazareth shows us that God is loved and served in the ordinary everyday realities of life, which we offer up to God in a spirit of praise and in union with the ordinary life lived by our beloved Brother and Lord.

I think it is very important for us to remember that by sharing in a life just like ours, Jesus as God-in-the-flesh made our everyday lives among those with whom we live, work and socialize a pathway to holiness. He made it the way in which we grow in faith, deepen our trust in God and show our love for Him in the way we treat others.

Bethlehem & Jerusalem were both awesome and each had its role in the Christmas story.  But the angels gave their message to the shepherds and then returned to Heaven.  The magi did their homage to the Child and then returned home to the East. And old Simeon together with Anna spoke their prophecies and disappeared from the scene…

But Nazareth…Nazareth has never disappeared, but continues to live on in the ordinary everyday lives of Christians like you and me.