January 9, 2006
The Journey of the Magi
Poem by T.S. Eliot
"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, 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 gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have 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.
Was it for death or birth?
The manger lies under the shadow of the Cross.
Today we celebrate the end of the Christmas season. This is Epiphany, the showing forth of God to the nations. “The nations” is a Jewish way of speaking about the rest of us, the Gentiles. We are the nations who were called by birth through Abraham; instead we are called by the faith of the Apostles to serve Jesus the Christ, who is God incarnate brought forth from the womb of Mary.
Strangely, the Fathers of the Church have always linked this day to Calvary and to death. One of my most famous professors in Rome, Fr. Gerard O’Collins S.J. has just published an article in an English Catholic magazine called the Tablet. In this he states; “The birth and infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke …let us glimpse a deep connection between the birth of the Son of God and the climax of his human history on Good Friday and Easter Sunday,.”
Sometimes, in art, it is hard to tell whether we are at Bethlehem or in Calvary. Artists have painted the Magi and Christ meeting near a skull shaped hill. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that even in Bethlehem, the little child is menaced by the evil King Herod. Even here, death stalks him from the people who hold power in Israel. But the link in Matthew’s Gospel is clearly shown in the textual detail. The wise men ask Herod; “Who is he that is born, king of the Jews?” (Matthew 2: 2) this question receives a long awaited answer in Matthew 27: 11, when Christ is crucified under the title of “King of the Jews”. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the king of the Jews is revealed on a Cross at Calvary.
If we look at the feast days that surround the birth of Jesus, we also see a close connection to death. The day after Christmas is the feast of Saint Stephen, the first martyr. He was stoned to death while Paul held the coats of the killers. Two days later is the feast of the Holy Innocents, who were killed in mistake for Jesus. Even more importantly, New Year’s Day used to be called the feast of the Circumcision. Tradition sees that event as the first shedding of Christ’s blood. His loss of blood on that day is seen as a foretaste of the bloodletting of the Passion.
The Fathers interpret the gifts of the Magi in terms of the nature and mission of Christ. The gold is significant of Christ’s royal status. Incense stands for his divine nature, since we only offer incense to God. Myrrh is symbolic of Christ’s human nature, since it is used to help embalm the dead. Even as a little Child in the arms of his young mother, Jesus the Christ is already proceeding towards his goal, to redeem his kinsmen and women from the power of evil and the slavery to our past mistakes. It is in the life and death of Jesus that we are made free and that our futures are not sealed by human destruction.