Feast of the Epiphany - Homily 11

Homily 11 - 8 January 2023

The Gospel of Matthew, from which today’s passage is taken, presented us with the familiar story of the coming of the Magi from the East in search of the newborn Christ. Matthew composed the story to give his readers, right from the start of his Gospel, a kind of dress rehearsal of the instruction that the risen Jesus would give to his chosen apostles right at the end of his Gospel. They were to continue his mission, not just to the Jewish people to whom he had restricted his ministry, but to “all the nations”.

Here in today’s brief passage, the focus was on the Gentile world, casting a favourable light on the openness of a few typical Gentiles, Magi in this case, to the relevance and the specialness of the newborn Jesus. By the time that Matthew was writing his Gospel about the year 80, Gentiles made up the majority of the members of the small Christian communities scattered around the Jewish diaspora. In Matthew’s own community, for whom he wrote his Gospel, there was a certain amount of awkwardness and tension between Jewish and Gentile members. He wanted to make quite clear the equal status of both groups.

A further significant point that Matthew wished to flag was the attitude captured in his comment when the visitors from the East told King Herod about the reason for their journey. “He was perturbed, and so was the whole of Jerusalem. He called together all the chief priests and the scribes … and enquired of them where the Christ was to be born”. Significantly, the chief priests and scribes [the lawyers and experts in law], knew the answer and quoted the prophet Micah accordingly. Probably they had even done their bit teaching people generally about such matters. They may even have thought the message was good news.

Only when they learnt the possibility of its ‘here and now’ fulfilment did they feel threatened. An imminent Messiah meant the dawning of a new era in their history, that could radically threaten the status quo and their own privileged position in that status quo. Change would bring issues of power and privilege to the fore. Their sense of themselves would be radically undermined. They were “perturbed, and so was the whole of Jerusalem”. The situation was becoming dangerously threatening for them — dangerous, too, for the young teenage mother and her newborn child.

Matthew emphasised the point by mentioning the highly symbolic gift of myrrh among the gifts that the Magi presented to the child. Myrrh was used to embalm dead bodies — and pointed to the eventual death of Jesus that would be plotted precisely by "the chief priests and scribes”.

Pope Benedict was buried this week in the shadow of today’s celebration of the Epiphany.

There are two things about Benedict that I particularly admired. The first was that he treasured very much his personal one-to-one relationship with Jesus that even led him to write a few books on Jesus.

He also wrote three very thoughtful encyclical letters: on the virtues of truth enlightening love, on hope and on charity — teasing out the relevance of each to the attainment of full human development. He had a great love for truth generally. And he possessed a very clear mind that enabled him to write sense. He wanted to share with everyone the fruits of his contemplation.

I think that Benedict came to see, as does Pope Francis, that we stand at the dawn of a new era — in both the secular world and in the Church. He realised that the Church must necessarily change; and he accepted also that he was too old and frail to pilot the Church effectively. So, to the surprise of all, he had enough initiative and courage to make the highly significant choice to resign.

Let us pray that he is enjoying already the vision of the Christ whom he loved, and contemplating the God of truth whom he constantly sought.