Isaiah 60:1-6 Ephesians 3:2-6 Matthew 2:1-12
I have a long-standing friend who is a distinguished academic. She has occupied university chairs in several countries, including here in the UK, and published many books and articles. In recent years, the current crisis in academia itself has become one of her main interests. So she has turned her attention to the fate of the University as an established and yet constantly evolving institution in our society. On this subject, among other things, a few months ago she wrote an impassioned article for a big daily newspaper. Having given various arguments to support her views, she also wrote:
“Many of us academics are admittedly weirdos, geeks: people who, as teenagers, hated PE lessons, preferred reading books in obscure corners of the school library to football matches. We were ridiculed and taunted for our awkwardness, for our shabby looks, for clothes that didn't quite fit, for the big glasses on our noses. It was only when we got into the University that we finally felt at home, among like-minded others, laughing at mathematical jokes, supportive of each other's intellectual interests. But that space got invaded by managers in suits”, she wrote, “by the very people who used to taunt us at school, who stabbed us in the back with sharpened pencils. They came from the very world which we had rejected on entering Academia and they said: ‘Be more efficient, produce more, present yourselves better, learn how to sell your work, make it relevant to the Economy’. But that is to miss the point of the University, the point of being an Academic, which is the single-minded pursuit and love of knowledge. And this mistake is precisely what's killing the University today, as it is destroying pretty much anything else that's not immediately useful; anything else that refuses to serve as a mere cog in the system, that refuses to justify itself in purely Economic terms.” My Professor-friend compared Academia to Monasticism in her article, and quite right, I think.
But it's the Epiphany today! So why am I saying all this? Because whenever I read about the Magi in the Gospel, this is how I think of them. They would be distinguished scholars now, but real ones, of the kind described above: public intellectuals from a foreign country perhaps, brilliant but definitely eccentric. The Magi were not kings. The designation “wise men” is too general. Astrology, in turn, sounds too esoteric to us today. No, the essential point to the Magi is precisely this single-minded, passionate pursuit of truth which would characterize good Academics of later ages. And, if we are honest, in anything that we ourselves obsessively pursue, are we not looking for a sign? How else would you explain the forgetfulness of self which the search for truth or beauty for their own sake requires of us and bestows on us? Deep down, however unconsciously, are we not expecting something, someone to wave back at us from the other side, as it were, when we give undivided attention to some bit of reality for years or decades, struggling to understand it as it dances in front of us like a crazy ballerina, always eluding our grasp? Simone Weil famously stated that “absolutely unmixed attention is prayer”. Studies, in her view, were the best preparation for prayer precisely as “a form of gymnastics of the attention”. The object does not really matter, as long as it's reality in one of its countless guises.
Studies don't have to be strictly academic either. In fact, St John Chrysostom and other early commentators warned their congregations that they should not put too much weight on the fact that the sign given to the Magi was a star. It's the other way around. A star became a sign for them because, as astronomers, that was what they were looking at, what they gave their attention to; that was what made them almost-pray to the Lord God, pushed them to the brink of prayer – gazing at stars.
Saint Peter was a fisherman, and so Our Lord gave him a different sign. “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch,” he said. There followed a sign tailor-made for Peter and for his companions. Incidentally, that proves to me that they were real fisherman, who were passionately into what they were doing, and not mere wage-earners. That also explains why Our Lord promised Peter that he would become a fisher of men. Otherwise this whole business of being an Apostle would not appeal to Peter as much, if it could not be thought of in terms of fishing one way or another.
Let me not get side-tracked though. We are celebrating the Epiphany today. Or better, the Good News for today is the Epiphany. That is: God manifesting Himself to these pagan scholars, God waving back at those weirdos and geeks, because of their undivided attention, because of their “sincere hearts”. The Magi were looking for Him without being fully aware of it, they were almost praying to Him, not quite but on the other hand – wholeheartedly, and that's what matters, as it turns out. They represent the pagan world coming to Christ from outside of the Law. They stand for all of us Gentiles before we came to believe, but also for all those who don't explicitly believe now, yet seek the truth and follow what is right with sincere hearts.
The II Vatican Council famously affirmed that there is a link between them and the People of God, even if explicit faith is missing. And we pray for them as for our brothers and sisters in Eucharistic Prayer IV and in the Solemn Intercessions on Good Friday, for example. We pray for tailor-made signs. Some have said that this represents a change in doctrine, a lowering of the standards, a bow to the prevalent relativism. I don't think so. I haven't met all that many people who are single-mindedly dedicated to the pursuit of truth, to doing what is right. And those I have met are always made to suffer for it. And yet they go on. And what about managers wearing suits? We have to watch out for them. They are the functionaries of the System, just as Herod and the Chief Priests were in the time of Jesus and his devoted Magi. They can't or won't see beyond what is immediately useful, and they inevitably end up persecuting those who are trying to pray.
DSP