Feast of the Epiphany

Homily 1 - 2005

I find Isaiah’s vision/dream in today’s first reading inspiring: Jerusalem would enlighten the nations, the world, leading them all to recognise and accept the God whom the Jewish people had learnt, particularly through their sufferings in exile, to trust and to love... And he dared to dream at a time when his nation was utterly insignificant, no one taking them seriously, little more than a group of disheartened stragglers recently returned from captivity.

The Psalm that followed the first reading was somewhat more triumphalist, dreaming of a world-wide empire “from the Great River to earth’s bounds”. But it went on to make explicit the nature of Israel’s’ rule: justice shall flourish, and universal peace. In his days justice shall flourish and peace till the moon fails. Indeed, the future ruler would be particularly responsive to the poor, the needy and the weak. For he shall save the poor when they cry and the needy who are helpless. He will have pity on the weak and save the lives of the poor.

It is to this vision that Matthew turns in today’s Gospel miniature: the nations, the wider world (represented in the wise men from the East), respond to the gracious rule of the powerless infant Christ. He shows us a Christ, originating from and expressing the heart of Israel’s spirituality, as the human face of the God to whom the whole world is precious and every person.

Yet we know from the rest of the story (that we read as last Sunday’s Gospel) that the visit of the wise men and their gift of myrrh used for embalming the dead hinted at the violence that would later engulf Christ, and their question as the whereabouts of the new-born king triggered off the fierce massacre of innocent children in the environs of Bethlehem by the prudent King Herod. Does that story lead us further into the heart of our God?

The response of so many nations, and particularly of individuals in the aftermath of the recent tsunami, is a heartening instance of how much the Jewish/Christian sense of the dignity of every person and the call to solidarity between nations has unconsciously become part of a large part of our world’s thinking.

How do we respond as Christians - with our privileged access to the heart of God? We stand shoulder to shoulder with so many others: we grieve the devastation; we rejoice in the world’s response; we become part of that response as best we can; we acclaim and encourage our Government’s response and urge even more.

Yet perhaps we can do more. We see the broader context, as our hearts beat in tune with the heartbeat of our God. As well as responding to the present natural disaster, we encourage a similar response to those hundreds of thousands of others around the world killed or devastated as a result of human decisions or indecisions; the innocent civilians in Iraq, the tribal people around Darfur in the Sudan, the refugees fleeing across neighbouring borders in fear of their lives, and those others seeking asylum further afield and often being treated as criminals for having the initiative to do so, the thousands of children going to bed hungry each night, so many of whom eventually succumb to death through starvation, the sufferers from HIV/AIDS unable to access cheap retroviral drugs. The list goes on.

The prompt and generous response of our government shows us what we as a nation can and will do when we are motivated and energised. Yet we need to become consistent. Our response to world need last year was, I think, .25% of our GDP. We had promised .7%, but the priority has slipped.

The task remains: Isaiah was at it 2,500 years ago. Jesus lived and died to show us how much a person can love. Rather than getting discouraged, let us draw hope from each other and complete the work that our Lord has called us to.

Homily 2 - 2006

With the Feast of Epiphany we celebrate the fact that the first people, after Joseph and Mary, to recognise and adore Jesus were foreigners. Matthew was not so much interested in building up the number of figures around the crib. Right from the start of his Gospel he wanted to insist that a key message of the gospel was inclusiveness. He needed to emphasise this because he was writing for a community that experienced tension. On the one hand were converts from Judaism familiar with and comfortable in their Jewish ways, perhaps instinctively elitist, and very sensitive to boundaries. On the other hand were converts from the pagan Hellenistic world of the wider Middle East, probably Syrian, enthusiastic, but without much knowledge of Jewish background and not sensitive to Jewish taboos. The combination was a recipe for headaches.

In some ways the Church today, like Matthew’s community, experiences tension. We live in a time of amazing cultural change, and we are children of our times. How do we approach the tensions as disciples of Jesus? The central Christian concern at all times is to love. The birth of Christ reminds us of that. And that love is often quite difficult.

In a Church of people with differing attitudes, what does love mean? We often distinguish loving from liking. I think that that distinction can sometimes be dangerous. I think that loving involves being open to like, hoping to like, even when not succeeding at it.

Except in very rare instances, loving means presuming honesty in the other. Presumably we’re all doing our best to know, love and follow Jesus.

Loving, then, means seeking to see the heart of the other, a readiness to listen to what the other is saying, to the depth of feeling there, and finding out their reason for saying it. We can’t argue with the feeling, but we can often discuss the reasons behind the attitudes.

Loving means being ready to reveal what we think, how we feel, and (if we know) why we think and feel the way we do. Loving doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with one another.

In a community of people with different attitudes, we can’t all get our own way. We will often have to compromise. What matters is not what I but what we, the community, can realistically, given our differences, arrive at. We can’t compromise conscience, of course, and we’re never asked to. The problem area is usually that of practical issues of Church order – what we choose to do together, and how we do things when we are together.

It is the responsibility of the leader of the local Church community, the Parish Priest, to make certain decisions. As well as being responsible to the local community, he is also responsible to the bishop, and through the bishop, to the constantly developing tradition of the wider Church. It is a difficult role, and the leader doesn’t always, from our point of view, get it right. What then? We make our view known to the leader – first. We try to get the leader to change, not by bringing pressure to bear but by sharing our point of view. That was Jesus’ way. If we are not prepared to do that, then we keep quiet. Among the immature, destructive responses we can get trapped in, are the perennials: gossip and instinctive criticism. It can be hard work loving in a time of cultural change, but it does give unequalled opportunity for human and Christian growth..

Getting back to Matthew’s concern in bringing a group of foreigners right into the crib. Can we handle the fact that others, different from us, whatever the differences might be, really do recognise and love Christ, possibly even more than we do?

Homily 3 - 2007

A strange story, today’s, in lots of ways. Of course, Matthew didn’t make it up for itself, but to make a series of theological points, hoping to tease, or to inform, his readers before he tackled the story of Jesus’ public life, that culminated in his death, and that mysterious ending that they called resurrection. A strange story – a band of mistaken men (as though stars determine reality!) searching, wanting, incomplete – unsatisfied, restless, needing to move.

Isn’t everyone? except perhaps those few who despair, and perhaps even they may yearn more than most. What do advertisements touch into, if not our vulnerability, our weakness, our emptiness, our longings? They touch into longings, that may even be good in themselves, but are hardly the deepest. The philosophers and theologians say that our deepest longing is for happiness. Thanks. But what does happiness consist in?

The Magi saw the Christ-child. They were filled with joy. Is that what they wanted? why they took that interminable journey? Joy is not bad. But then they went back home? Were they still restless?

When Buddhists think of happiness, they speak of enlightenment; freedom from all desire, yet oneness with all that is. Mystics speak of union with God, with infinite, unknowable love – union of love, received and returned – involving, as with the Buddhists, the recognition that nothing else satisfies – so not seeking, desiring anything else but yearning for the infinite.

The Magi saw the infant Christ. Would another child have done? You can answer that better than I. When you hold a powerless, innocent child and gaze into its eyes, you can touch into mystery. Perhaps the child’s eyes hold up a mirror to yourself. Perhaps you see, experience yourself as mystery – the possibility, the responsibility of unconditional love. But you can’t hold it forever. It satisfies profoundly; then stirs a deeper longing.

The chief priests and scribes in Jerusalem had all the answers. They knew their faith. They knew their Scriptures – but, unlike the Magi, they had no questions,

As we start another year, as we begin once more to thread our way each Sunday through the Gospel of Luke, will it be the familiar one more time – nothing new, nothing stirring – like the Scriptures apparently were for the chief priests and scribes? We’ve been that way before – sadly. Or, does something stir, a longing that longs to be noticed.

This year might Christ help us in our quest? Perhaps the story of the Magi is not such a harmless story after all. It can invite us to follow our star, to connect with our deepest longing planted in our hearts by our creating God.

Homily 4 - 2008

In the way he tells his story, Matthew contrasts the Jerusalem scribes and the pagan Magi. The Jerusalem scribes had the right answers – they knew their Bible – but they showed no interest in searching for or responding to God’s break-through into our world. The Magi from the East didn’t know the answers, but were very interested in searching for and responding to God’s presence in the world: falling on their knees, they did him homage… and offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.

There can be a danger in having the right answers. We can think we know all that needs to be known about God, and we can even look down on those who don’t.

But that is not what it is all about. In fact, the Church insists that all our words about God are more unlike than like the reality of the Mystery that is God. We know God best, not by words and definitions, but by relationship. We come to know God as we allow ourselves to be transformed by God; as we allow God slowly to shape us according to God’s likeness. In coming to know our changing selves, we come to know God better, too.

An adult who has remained faithful to love across the years, in the midst of beautiful ups and painful downs knows a lot more about love than a child of five, an adolescent, or even a couple fronting up to get married. As we are changed by the grace of God, our personal experience serves to give richer, but always inadequate, content to the words we use about God.

In getting closer to God, what matter are our desire and our determination to seek God. Where we start from is not important: the Magi were astrologers. They thought that stars influenced and controlled people’s lives. But, despite all that nonsense, they were men of desires; they were seekers; and they were prepared to pay the price of searching and to respond to what they found. They found, and recognised, Christ.

The scribes, with all their book knowledge, not only failed to find and to recognise Christ, but by the end of the Gospel, they had conspired to execute him. Did they have no desires, to start with? Or had their self-assurance and their determination to retain the status quo stifled what desires they might have had?

Whatever about the scribes, or the Magi, what matters for us is to learn to notice, and to uncover our deepest desires, to be seekers – always seekers – and ready always to be opened up, and to undergo God.

But it is good to be careful. Matthew had the Magi travel in company. They relied on each other for motivation, protection and discernment. They accepted help, even from the barren Jerusalem scribes. On our journey into the Mystery of God, we do well to seek the help, if possible, of wise and seasoned travellers; to journey in company – for mutual encouragement, and enlightened discernment, should we be overawed by our demons or wearied by the desert.

Homily 5 - 2009

Matthew’s story of the visit of the Magi to the new-born child was his way to bring out imaginatively, right from the start, aspects of the significance and purpose of Jesus’ later life and death. It is a message that is so poignantly, and frustratingly, highlighted by its opposite that is happening in Israel and Gaza right at this moment while we’re here reflecting.

Today’s First Reading from Isaiah, along with the Responsorial Psalm – their mood, their message and their images – provided the material for Matthew’s narrative construction.

Writing at a time when the dispirited and struggling survivors of fifty years of exile in Babylon. They had just recently returned to their homeland, Isaiah dreamed of a glorious future. His was a dream of universal peace – though a peace, nevertheless, in which Israel would be top nation. The nations come to your light and kings to your dawning brightness … the riches of the sea, the wealth of the nations come to you … Everyone will come bringing gold and incense and singing the praise of the Lord.

The Psalm, from an earlier period, thought of that glorious future in terms of a just and powerful king: The kings of Sheba and Seba will bring him gifts. Before him all kings shall fall prostrate, all nations shall serve him.

At the time that Matthew composed his visionary narrative, he was clearly aware that Jesus had been rejected, condemned and humiliatingly crucified by the local Roman governor in Judea. So much for all the nations serving him! What, then, was Matthew up to?

For Matthew and the early Christians, Jesus’ death did not negate his significance or his message. Rather, it was the message – it illustrated the message. Jesus’ death was not just the price but the greatest proof of his message: Jesus promised peace; Jesus taught peace. More than that, Jesus’ death made peace – universal peace – graspable. Lasting peace has only one possible basis – not military might, not coercion, not bargaining, not smart diplomacy – but mutual respect and love. That’s its greatness – but it’s also its greatest problem.

Who can love? Who is strong enough to be able to love, and to accept the vulnerability and powerlessness inherent in all love? Jesus was. His death illustrated that. It also illustrated the mind and the power of God who enabled, supported and empowered him. There will be peace when and as we let God make us strong enough to love.

While I was down in Melbourne last week with my sister, I came across a quotation from a book by Daniel Berrigan, an American Jesuit and a committed peace campaigner: He wrote: “But what of the price of peace? I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted by the wasting disease of normalcy, that, even as they declare for peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction … of their comforts, their homes, their security, their incomes, their futures, their plans? ‘Of course, let us have peace’, we cry, ‘but at the same time let us have our normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact…’ And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all cost – at all costs – our hopes must march on schedule … because it is unheard of that good men and women should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost – because of this we cry peace, and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peace-makers. Peacemaking is hard. Almost as hard as war.”

Reading Berrigan, I feel guilty. Reading the Gospels, I feel guilty. But, of itself, guilt, or rather shame, just paralyses. We sin – and God forgives sin. If only we would believe that, God’s love would begin to set us free, would change us, would empower us to love like God – and peace would be spread irresistibly. That is what resurrection is about.

That was the hope that inspired Matthew’s story of the wise men from the East who, falling on their knees before the infant Christ, did him homage. Or, as the Responsorial Psalm put it: Before him all kings shall fall prostrate, all nations shall serve him … In his days justice shall flourish and peace till the moon fails.

Homily 6 - 2010

Luke and Matthew have quite different agendas in their delightful reconstructions of Jesus’ infancy.

Luke chose to highlight a God present in a feed-box cradle, born to a homeless couple, who was good news to a group of shepherds, a job that put them at the bottom of the social scale, mothered by a woman who rejoiced that God pulled down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly.

Matthew’s agenda was quite different – not contradictory, perhaps, even, complementary, as we can see from today’s Gospel. The Gospel presented us with a group of men, Magi, a professional group in their country – astrologers. There are three things about them that interest me; and which, I think, are surprisingly relevant to us today.

The first thing: They somehow saw that the birth of Jesus had more than a nationalistic resonance – not just a Jewish thing. It was significant for them, too. God is the God interested in all peoples, all nations. Remember that wonderful photo of planet earth, taken from space by the first astronauts. It helped us get the sense that our world is a global village. But this is better than that. If God is God for all peoples, we are more than a global village – we are a global family, with family connections and responsibilities to everyone in our world.

The second thing about these men from the East that interests me is what it was that got them moving. They were alert to their natural world, the world of their own professional expertise, the world of the night skies and the stars. They heard the call of God mediated through the natural events they observed – and they responded. They didn’t bother whether the rest of the world got moving; they didn’t bother even that the ones who should have been concerned weren’t concerned – the chief priests and their advisors. They responded.

The third thing that interests me is that, when they found the object of their search – God born into the fabric of our world – they shared what wealth they had, their gold, frankincense and myrrh – not all that useful, perhaps, to Mary and Joseph, but meaningful to them – the expression of their income.

Friday was New Year’s Day, and, as has been the custom for the last 43 years, a wise man shared his convictions with the world. Pope Benedict gave his annual statement for the World Day of Peace. He titled it: “If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation”. This wise man has a profound sense of our world as a global village, even as global family under God. Like Luke, as well as Matthew, he is very aware that God is particularly concerned with those on the edge, those who are at the bottom of the pile, the victims of the self-interest of the wealthier and the more powerful.

Back to the wise men of Matthew’s Gospel. Like them, Pope Benedict is profoundly alert to our natural world; and he hears the call of God mediated through what is happening in our natural world. He asks: “Can we remain indifferent before the problems associated with such realities as climate change, desertification, the deterioration and loss of productivity of vast agricultural areas, the pollution of rivers and aquifers, the loss of biodiversity, the increase of natural catastrophes…? Can we disregard the growing phenomenon of “environmental refugees”, people who are forced by the degradation of their natural habitat to forsake it – and often their possessions as well – in order to face the dangers and uncertainties of forced displacement?”

Like the wise men, he invites us to share the world’s wealth, to move beyond self-interest, and to be open to share what we have, even though it costs. He repeats this refrain a few times: “Our present crises … call for a lifestyle marked by sobriety and solidarity, with new rules and forms of engagement”.. and again: “Technologically advanced societies must be prepared to encourage more sober lifestyles, while reducing their energy consumption and improving its efficiency”… and again: “There is a need .. to move beyond a purely consumerist mentality”..

I’ll wind up with a final quotation from Benedict: “I would advocate the adoption of a model of development based on the centrality of the human person, on the promotion and sharing of the common good, on responsibility, on a realisation of our need for a changed life-style, and on prudence, the virtue which tells us what needs to be done today in view of what might happen tomorrow.” Matthew might be surprised at how relevant his story has remained.

We move now into Eucharist. The reconciling God comes among us once more – God’s energy of love drawing us into ever deeper solidarity – with everyone. In the Eucharistic Prayer we shall pray: “Grant that we, who are nourished by Christ’s body and blood, may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ.”

Homily 7 – 2011

The only people mentioned in Matthew’s story of Jesus’ infancy, (apart from Jesus himself, his father Joseph and his mother Mary), were the wise men from the East, and Herod and the group of chief priests and scribes.

The stark contrast between these two latter groups was deliberate. The men from the East were seekers, men prepared to give treasures away and to pay homage to another. They were gentiles – outsiders. How different they were from the insiders! - Herod was no seeker; he was a controller, prepared even to kill to maintain control. - The Jewish chief priests and scribes were not seekers, either. They had the answers, but no questions, no thirst. The possibility of change perturbed them (as Matthew noted).

What might the Gospel be saying to us as we listen this morning? Our answer may depend on whether we class ourselves as insiders or outsiders. It seems to be pretty human to categorise people as insiders or outsiders – as ‘on our side’, or against us. We like to think that God is on our side. We might like, even more, to think that God will get those others who are not on our side.

That certainly seems to be the way that little children see God… … though, as they grow into adolescence, they feel also at home with the God who rewards and punishes – who rewards the deserving and punishes the undeserving. From what I’ve heard, reward and punishment are the ground rules in obedience school for dogs, and horses. And rewards and punishments do help in socializing children and adolescents. But they don’t belong in God’s repertoire. What we are or do does not change God’s attitude to us. God loves everyone – without our even trying.

St Paul’s message in today’s Second Reading reinforces the message that Matthew wished to convey with his story of the Gentile Magi. As Paul put it: Outsider pagans now share the same inheritance as insider Jews, the same promise has been made to them. The persons that Jews most disliked, the persons they most despised, God reached out to them as much as God reached out to Jews.

Fair enough for the Jews. What about us? The people we most dislike, the people we most discount, God loves them as much as God loves us. … the people who couldn’t care less about God; the people who couldn’t care less about morality. God loves them as much as God loves us who try so hard. There is no problem with God. Jesus made the same point a little more poetically: God makes the sun rise on bad as well as good; the rain fall on honest and dishonest alike.

This can be a bit worrying. If God loves us no more than them, why bother? The answer to that is simply: It takes two to tango! Eternity is not about ice-cream for the good and eternal fire for the bad. Eternity is about relationship or isolation… … about whether, on the one hand, we trust the God who loves and surrender to the embrace of God; or whether, on the other hand, we hold back from trusting, hold back from loving, and choose, instead, our own little self-absorbed world, and live in isolation, for eternity, relating to no one but ourselves.

The gentile wise men were seekers. Herod and the religious establishment were not. Self-satisfied, with God comfortably under their thumb, they remained locked in their own narrow, controlled, sterile little worlds.

Perhaps, a challenge of today’s feast is this: Can we take the punt to trust God’s love? It means letting go not only of our vices, but also of our virtues – counting on nothing, relying on nothing, beyond the infinite, undiscriminating, always available, uniquely fulfilling love of God. We won’t go to the dogs. Anything but. Try it and see.

That’s my New Year’s wish for me, and for you.

Homily 8 – 2012

What was Matthew up to by prefacing his Gospel with this story of a wandering star, of exotic wise men from unnamed foreign lands, bringing unusual, quite impractical and useless gifts of gold, and frankincense and myrrh to an uninteresting, lower class family and their infant child – whom they expected to become a future Jewish king?

One of Matthew’s reasons is fairly clear. He was writing his Gospel for his community – which was made up of both Jews and non-Jewish, Gentile, converts.

The adult Jew, Jesus, whom he would write about scarcely ever set foot outside his native land, and was certainly quite unknown beyond its borders. Yet, Matthew wished to emphasise, right from the start, that Jesus was nevertheless crucially relevant to the salvation of the whole world and of everyone in it – whether Jews like himself, or Gentiles. Matthew would conclude his Gospel with the scene of the risen Jesus sending his Jewish disciples to preach the Gospel to every creature and to make disciples of all the nations.

But I think that Matthew also wanted to foreshadow something else that would pervade the storyline of the public life and death of the adult Jesus. Where do we find God? How do we find God? and Who is the God we might find?

To me, Matthew’s story of the wise men raises the theme of expectations. In today’s story, the new-born child hardly met the wise-men’s expectations. He wasn’t a child of the reigning royal family of Herod. He turned out to be a “nobody” – a nondescript child of nondescript parents in a “back-blocks” village, fussed around by no one, except themselves. To add to the challenge, Matthew would have the birth of Jesus be the occasion of the heartless massacre of other new-born children in the district – hardly Good News for mothers or fathers.

What was Matthew up to? I think that Matthew was rehearsing the theme that the adult Jesus also failed expectations. Jesus created a stir for a while, briefly became relatively famous up in rural Galilee; but then, once he set foot in the capital, Jerusalem, he was rejected, officially condemned as a blasphemer – as dishonoring God, and helplessly, brutally murdered by the local Roman strong-man, Pilate. He had even failed the expectations of his own disciples. Certainly, Matthew’s Gospel also told of resurrection; but that was experienced only by a small inner circle, and mainly by women, who, in the patriarchal culture of the time, simply didn’t count.

Let’s jump twenty centuries to our own time. Epiphany means revelation, specifically, the revealing of God. What was Matthew saying about a God revealed through all this? To many people, in our Western World at least, God has become irrelevant. There are many different reasons for this. But perhaps, significant among them, is the fact that God has simply failed people’s expectations. People want a God who pulls the strings, who, among other things, prevents suffering and sickness and death. A God who pulls no strings is a scandal to many.

And here we are today. Perhaps life has led us, [or is leading us], to look more closely at our expectations. Do we want a God who pulls strings? Or is our deeper yearning for a God who loves? and Does one alternative rule out the other? Perhaps, our answer to that reflects how much we have progressed in our understanding and our experience of the mystery of love. Perhaps, not unexpectedly, we’re in the middle of mystery. [I might even say: in the muddle of mystery!]. Yet, surprisingly, wonderfully, we’re hanging in; and we’re still exploring – even thankful that Jesus turned out the way he did.

That’s what we’re remembering and celebrating in this Eucharist.

Homily 9 - 2017

The visit of the Magi does not figure in the mysteries of the Rosary – yet it may still be difficult to approach it with a sense of freshness and openness to discovery. But let us try. In fact, let us try to use it in our prayer, in the genuine hope that God might touch us anew and nourish us through its message.

St Ignatius of Loyola suggested a way of praying the Gospels by using our imaginations. That frees us from the worry of whether we are doing it right, whether we need to have studied the Gospels beforehand and know what the Gospel author is about. There is place for that, but not necessarily or always in our prayer. We do not need to ask whether we are dealing with actual history or with a story composed under the influence of God’s Spirit. We just use it as we choose, now, and see where we go.

In our journey this evening we can take the Gospel story as read and already familiar. Instead, I shall use a poem written by an English poet, TS Eliot. Eliot used his imagination – to engage with the scene. He put himself in the shoes of one of the Magi, picturing him back home in whatever country he came from, an old man by now, and ruminating over the event that happened many years before.

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.'

And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

You get the idea – highly imaginative, yet engaging our attention.

I shall skip the poem’s second verse where, like Matthew before him, the poet introduced his own symbolism to stimulate the minds of us his readers.

The poem’s third verse outlined the questions stirred in Eliot’s heart and mind by his ruminating over the story. Again, he put these personal reflections in the mouth of the old Magus, the wise man.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

If in our prayer we let our imaginations wander creatively, they generally do get us thinking and wondering against the background of our own lives now. They give opportunity to God’s Spirit to stir. They set us up to engage, as it were, with God. They may even lead us to want to sit silently with mystery.

Homily 10 - 2020

Matthew’s story, with all its charm, raises for me some interesting questions. He clearly contrasted two groups of people. On the one hand, we have magi from the East, following their mysterious star, and at great personal cost, seeking an unknown king. On the other hand, we have Herod, and the chief priests and scribes of the people, as well as the whole of Jerusalem, consulting their scriptures, knowing the answers, but not interested in going anywhere.

Rather than look at the groups as real people, let’s see them, rather, as representing two contrasting attitudes that can be found in most of us at different times [or even at the same time!].

The magi were men with a mission – a mission that energised their searching. Perhaps they felt dissatisfaction in their hearts, a sense of something important still missing. They saw the unfamiliar star in the sky and, given their background, it stirred in them the possibility of an answer to their deepest longings, a possibility strong enough to disrupt their lives and set them off on what could well prove a “wild goose chase”. And just in case their hopes might lead them a long way from home and security, perhaps even through unfriendly territory, they brought with them their gold, frankincense and myrrh, to trade with them to pay for food and lodging for themselves and their camels, and to cover unexpected expenses they might incur in unfamiliar lands.

Their search led them to a non-descript house in Bethlehem. Matthew wrote, “… going into the house they saw the child with his mother” – a wonderful understatement! Surely they had seen children before? But somehow, they knew in their depths that this experience was special. They “saw” him as they had never seen anyone else previously. And their lives changed forever. Matthew quietly added, “falling to their knees, they did him homage.” I imagine that the “falling to their knees” was spontaneous; their doing him “homage” because they did not know how else to respond. Was it adoration? Was it beyond expression, indescribable – but also delightful? Can you remember ever having an experience like that – one that took your breath away? Has your reflecting on the Feast of Christmas ever done that to you? Would you like it to?

Matthew concluded his little cameo by commenting, “opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.” They responded with an act of love. Seeing reality can do that – seeing with a clarity never seen before, loving at a depth never imagined before.

Does the other group, too [Herod and the chief priests and the whole of Jerusalem], help us to recognise other possibilities in ourselves? Matthew said they were “perturbed”, fearful. They were the ones with vested interests in the status quo. They thought they had power. And in a sense they did – the power to kill, and to enslave. They thought they knew the answers. And in a certain sense they did – except that the Scriptures are not a collection of answers, but aids on a journey into the mystery of God. The people as a whole saw themselves as the proud custodians of the traditions – except that traditions give life only when they are allowed to grow and change organically as people learn to grow.

Sadly, as Matthew’s continuing story illustrated, their pride in power and knowledge and tradition led inevitably to cunning, lies and murder – a radically different outcome from that experienced by the magi whose searching led to insight and wisdom, humility and adoration, and lavish generosity and love.

Matthew wrote for his readers, among whom we can number ourselves. Perhaps, if we look, we see traces of both attitudes in ourselves. We are free. We can grow. The Incarnation was the idea of God – the expression of God’s amazing love for us.

Our present world needs love desperately. Will this season of Christmas result in us respecting the refugee, respecting our earth, our home, our natural environment? Indeed, more than respecting them – loving them. It’s possible. It may be necessary for survival.

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.