Epiphany 2010

 I once read the proposition: “Every historical Event...has its Text” (H. Schlier). One might want to pause before confirming that (though in a Pluscarden homily one never has much time to pause!). I suppose the American Declaration of Independence would be a case in point. Anyway, let it stand. Certainly it holds for Christmas. Jesus was born: historical fact. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us: faith’s view of this fact. That’s the Event. That’s what we celebrate. And this Event does indeed have its Text. More precisely texts: the opening pages of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John, especially. And throughout the Christmas season, these texts ring in our ears.

 And these texts themselves create a kind of world, a world we can enter. Texts do that, fictional ones too: films, plays, novels, poems and so forth. They all create a world. Think of  The Lord of the Rings, War and Peace. We enter into them. This isn’t necessarily escapism. It can be the opposite. It can be a way of stepping outside our ordinary experience into something other and larger, and so in the end understanding more deeply who and where we are. And this is so, very much so, with the texts, the stories of Christmas. Here we have people and places, stories and songs and sayings. Here is a cast of characters: Zechariah and Elizabeth, Herod and Caesar Augustus, Joseph and Mary, the angels and the shepherds, Simeon and Anna, John the Baptist and Jesus. And today the famous wise men from the East. There’s great wealth in these texts. And hearing them or seeing them in painting or in cribs, we enter into them. We are spirited into their world. And it’s good to be so. It’s good - more than good, really. They relate to an Event: the birth of Jesus, the incarnation of the Word; the central Event of human history. And that Event is not just in the past. In its core, it remains. It’s present. It’s still here. By the power of the Holy Spirit. It is present in every Mass. It’s present in every liturgy of Christmas. It is present as grace. Emmanuel, God with us. Since this birth, since this Incarnation, God is with us in this new way, as man. He is with every one of us, with human beings in every place and time. This Event is always alive in the living God. He is always bringing it to be. And it is always open, accessible to us by faith.

 And so, for example, the characters that we meet in the texts become paths for us, year after year, into the heart of the Event. They live too. Take the wise men. They are people of faith. They’re the first non-Jewish believers, harbingers of the great throng to come. Well, currently many of the noisiest antagonists of Christianity are scientists. But the magi were scientists of their time. And maybe they can point a way forward. They were students of the stars. They were seeking Wisdom there. They believed in what theology calls “cosmic revelation”; they believed that God makes himself known through creation, through nature; that there is a transcendent Wisdom in and beyond the visible world, that the world signs and speaks to us, that it is a place of epiphany. Of course, there can be naivety or superstition here; but not inevitably, not simply and solely. And then, it’s clear, the wise men were open as well to another kind of revelation: “prophetic revelation”, that entrusted to Israel, God’s speaking through the prophets. They weren’t locked into one reductionist world-view. They were aware of the Jewish expectation of a messianic king. And their research led them to connect a particular stellar phenomenon with the imminent birth of this King. And because their research wasn’t just a way of earning a living, or making a career, because it was a search for Wisdom and hope for a better world, they set off to Jerusalem, perhaps amid the derision of their colleagues. They followed the star of such truth as they had. They illustrate something John Henry Newman often spoke of: how a pure-hearted search for truth and goodness, wherever it begins, will always lead the searcher to deeper truth and goodness. It will never end nowhere. With God’s help, it will lead out of shadows and images into the fulness of truth. And so with these men. They reached their conclusions and got on their camels. They went to Jerusalem. There was perhaps a touch of the unworldly academic about them. In any case, their sincerity was such that, without knowing it, they passed unscathed through Herod’s political games. They followed the star, with mounting joy, till it halted over the place where the child was. “And going into the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling to their knees they did him homage.” Generous as well as genuine, they opened their treasures, and offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. It’s journey’s end for them. They had come to the fulness of both cosmic and prophetic revelation: they had come to the Word  through whom all things were made, now made flesh, and sitting on the lap of his mother, Wisdom incarnate. And being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they return to their own country by a different way, now themselves different men - touched by the Event.

 “Every Event...has its text.” It’s good to be spirited into the world of these texts, these characters. They are a path for us. And thanks to these texts, thanks to their characters, the doors of this Event remain open. The house of this Event can be entered into. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” That is the heart of the Event. In time, this Word made flesh would be famous for his words. But at the moment there are no words. Doubtless he gurgled and burped and made all the noises babies make, but the Gospels pass that by. And so may we. Instead we should accept the silence. Every Event of sacred history  has its grace as well as its text. And what is Christmas’ grace? What did the wise men find in the house? Not words, but an Epiphany. Something prior to words. A presence, a luminous presence. A child. A son, son of Mary, Son of the Father. A person beginning his human life. An Epiphany is something to be spiritually seen, and if it has flesh to be spiritually touched. There are spiritual senses as well as physical ones. And here is the grace of this Event. It’s light. It’s a touch. And it works in us at a level deeper than words or ideas. It’s something small and child-like, almost unnoticeable, but capable of changing whoever sees its light and feels its touch. St. Basil calls it “the birthday of the human race”. It’s spring in winter. It’s reconnection with the Source of life, the Father of this Son. It’s fresh energy. It’s hope. It’s endorsement of our humanity. It’s the strength to begin again. New life. “Arise, shine out Jerusalem, for your light has come, the glory of the Lord is rising on you” (Is 60:1).
 “Like light through clear glass, says St. Basil, the power of the Godhead shone through that human body for those whose inner eye was pure.” That was the Epiphany of the wise men. May it be ours as well!

          Fr. Hugh, O. S. B.