Each year I see or am sent a link to an article about how
the star Bethlehem was a) a fraud perpetrated by deluding biblical editors, b)
a perfectly explainable natural phenomenon, or c) just a metaphor. I tend to
smile gently when I read these generally well-meant contributions to seasonal
reading as they remind me once more how spiritually impoverished we are in our
day, and how ironic it is that we think of ourselves as the “enlightened” ones.
The star we celebrate at Epiphany is presented in the
Biblical narrative as a sign, guide, and symbol that cannot be reduced to any
of the neat categories moderns so like to use. One of the supreme joys of
having faith deeply set on the foundations of Holy Writ is the ability to
maintain connection—however strained—with such a holistic mindset.
The Sacred Scriptures, like all ancient texts, require us to
enter into pricey territory: we must take time and submerge our ego-centric
obsession with control and self-referential comfort in order to receive the
multivalent message they bring about something so profound as Reality or God or
Truth. That is a price too high to pay for many, it seems.
The Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord is a splendid example
of how rich and beautiful—as well as useful and meaningful—the Scriptures are.
This Feast commemorates Christ’s manifestation, his appearing to the world as
not just a human infant or even as the Savior, Redeemer, and Messiah of his own people only, but as the universal Savior for all
peoples. Through this little child, the spiritual
confusion and division of humanity is being unwound—sort of a reverse Tower of
Babel. And this is the ongoing mission of the Church.
The star that announces this revelation (in the Gospel
according to Matthew) brings with it vast amounts of meaning. It recalls the
stars as “intelligences” of the Creation (ministering and faithful spirits of a
living and interactive cosmos) and the promise made to Abraham that he would
have progeny as numerous as the stars of the night sky. So we have Cosmos and
history, generality and specificity. The star is a sign, but a sign that
partakes of the reality it points to. The distinction between viewer and event
is radically diminished in the Bible. We become participants, not simply
audience members. The star is important, yet it points not to itself but what
is truly significant—God’s direct participation in human life through the
Incarnation in Christ.
This dynamic participation sets us up to experience the
Epiphany not only as part of the
story of Christ, but as our story of
coming to faith by God’s mysterious leading. We do not initiate the process; we
respond to God’s leading (like the Magi and Star). But, are we open to this? Are we
listening? Are our heads turned up to the heavens in interest and wonder as we
look for Truth—or only to our computer screens in the mindless and endless act
of data-grazing, meme-sharing, and identity purchasing?
The Magi bring the fullness of human wisdom and science to
bear in the service of finding not only facts, but Truth. When humans offer
themselves for this kind of life, this kind of journey (metaphorical or
literal), we become vessels capable of receiving and sharing God and things divine. The Magi’s
purpose is so important to them they ignore common sense and actually advertise
the presence of a rival King to Herod. Assuming that Herod would want to join
them in this quest for Truth, they (and we) blurt out the purpose and joy
within us. Is our faith really that eager, that desirous of consummation in
God?
The Epiphany is also an engagement with the mission of the
Church. That mission is not to grow a larger institution or spread more second-hand
ideological propaganda. It is to minister its own Eucharistic gratitude for the
gift received from God by personal experience. Thus, the story
of the urgency attached to the Magi’s search.
The Magi aren’t barnstorming spiritual hucksters on the
Sawdust Trail. They are people whose living experience of God’s engagement has
caused them to venture from their own familiar worlds toward an unknown region,
a field of creative openness that can only be fulfilled by relationship with
the Author of knowledge.
This movement from possession to person is
then made manifest by their giving gifts to the Christ child. The symbolic
nature of these gifts is real, of course, but it is not the total meaning. The
Church is always receiving and giving gifts of knowledge and love; it is always
a Eucharistic community of sharing and worship. In a very real sense, the
Church is a continuous state of Epiphany-now-and-not-yet, a conduit of the
revelation that it does not statically possess
but lives, shares, and embodies. A
real faith is deeply verbal, not merely a string of nouns. This is the difference between authentic religion and mere
The mission of the Church to teach all nations and baptize
is not a checklist we are sent to complete by an impersonal, demanding God, something tempting us to
dehumanize both those in and outside the Church. The mission given to us is a
condition of existence, a state of transmission, a shining with a light
received, not generated.
The narrative of the Manifestation of Christ (which properly
includes the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, and
the First Miracle at a Wedding of Cana in Galilee) is an invitation to all who
read it to enter into this dialogue, to follow the star God has placed in our own
night sky, to use the science we have for something deeper than the
satisfaction of material matters. The season it is part of is one of looking
out into the Cosmos and meeting all we find there with curiosity and love as we
share the fruits of our own experience and openness to the Truth from Above. If
we possess neither openness nor experience, we are just stumbling in the dark of
our own opinions or biases and not Good News to anyone.
The Star of Bethlehem is about light in all its meanings. This star is not a fact, not a metaphor,
not a delusion or wishful thinking. It is
a star—with all that means. Only those who can look upon stars as an
inviting reality existing on all the planes of experience will be able to read
the sign, be open to the possibility, and take the journey.
Everyone else will just have to stay at home in the dark and
click on the link.
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