The solemnity of the Epiphany typically gets short shrift in Latin-rite Catholicism, for while Eastern Christianity lifts up the Epiphany as the apex of the Christmas season, Epiphany in the Western Church tends to get overwhelmed by the tsunami of Christmas, both liturgically and (especially) culturally.
When the Epiphany fell in the middle of the week and was a holy day of obligation, its importance as the commemoration of the “manifestation” of the Messiah was underscored; transferred to a Sunday, it tends to become one Sunday among others. The pre-1970 liturgical calendar recognized the significance of the Epiphany by designating “Sundays after Epiphany” between the conclusion of the Christmas season and the beginning of pre-Lent, thus stretching out the Church’s meditation on the Epiphany over several weeks. Now, Epiphany is quickly succeeded by the feast of the Lord’s Baptism, after which the liturgical period known by that dreadful neologism “Ordinary Time” begins.
While we wait in joyful hope (as we no longer say) for the restoration of some sanity to the liturgical calendar, we can be grateful for the insights into the Epiphany—and especially into those emblematic characters in the story, the Magi and the star—offered by Pope Benedict XVI in his new book, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives (Image).
As always with this scholar-pope, it’s the theology that counts, and Benedict’s theological reading of the Epiphany and the Magi story makes several important points.
The Magi—the Wise Men, the Three Kings—are crucial figures in salvation history, for they were the first Gentiles to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah promised to the people of Israel, through whom all the nations of the world will be blessed. That’s not a new insight, of course; what is striking in Benedict’s interpretation of their story is his expansion of the meaning of the Magi’s journey. The “Wise Men from the east,” he writes, “mark a ‘new beginning.’” In them, we find “the journeying of humanity toward Christ.”
Thus these Three Kings “initiate a procession that continues throughout history.” Moreover, they represent more than those who have actually found the Lord: “they represent the inner aspiration of the human spirit, the dynamism of religions and human reason” toward Christ. The Magi embody the truth of which Paul wrote in one of his great Christological hymns: “all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).
Then there is the star. After noting that this extraordinary phenomenon might have been the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces in 7-6 B.C. (that is, just about the time of the birth of Christ), the pope gets down to the real point, which is not astronomy but theology. The stars, Benedict recalls, were once thought to be divine powers that controlled the fates of men and women: thus the phrase, “it’s in the stars,” and thus the pseudo-science of astrology. The Epiphany and the Magi story reverse all of this.
For “it is not the star that determines the child’s destiny,” the pope writes; “it is the child that directs the star.” Astrology is out; humanity, so to speak, is in. And so, Benedict continues, “we may speak here of a kind of anthropological revolution: human nature assumed by God—as revealed in God’s only-begotten Son—is greater than all the powers of the material world, greater than the entire universe.”
The star, perceived with the eyes of faith and understood by the tools of theology, tells a brilliant, if not fully comprehended, story. If the Wise Men were led by a star to find the newborn king of the Jews who is in truth the universal savior, Benedict tells us, “this implies that the entire cosmos speaks of Christ, even though its language is not yet fully intelligible to man in his present state.” The “language of creation” points us toward the truth about the Creator, which is that God who creates is also God who redeems.
Thus the Epiphany points us toward the Cross (anticipated in the Magi’s gift of myrrh, which is also used at Jesus’ burial) and, ultimately, to the Resurrection.
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. His previous “On the Square” articles can be found here.
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Comments:
Something to ponder: What if the Star of Bethlehem was actually an angel? Angels have appeared as stars throughout the biblical record, especially in Revelation.
'Contrary to what is always said, liturgical feasts are not celebrations of events in salvation history. They are celebrations of the mysteries of salvation revealed to us in the biblical narrative of those events. In the East, the original feast of the Nativity cycle was January 6. In the West, it was December 25. What both feasts celebrated was not the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, nor his baptism in the Jordan, but the mystery of the manifestation, originally known as “epiphania” (manifestation) or “theophania” (divine manifestation); i.e., the appearance of God’s salvation in the Incarnation of his only-begotten Son. So, originally, each feast included all of the scenarios at the beginning of the Gospels that concern Jesus’ first manifesting this salvation, in some cases including even the Marriage Feast in Cana in Jn 2:1-11. Only later did the several biblical scenarios get redistributed between the two days, as a result of an exchange of feasts between East and West. This, then, is why the same richness of Scripture readings found in the East on January 6 are found in the West on December 25.
'So, if both traditions wish to preserve their identity, the answer is not for them to imitate each other blindly, but for each to return to the roots of its own heritage. In this case, the West needs to stop thinking that Christmas is centered on a medieval Italian invention, Baby Jesus in the presepio. For there is no Baby Jesus; there is only the Risen Glorified Lord seated at the right hand of the Father, and He and his saving mysteries is what Christmas and Easter and everything is about. The Western January 6 feast is not a feast of the Magi, but of the manifestation of salvation to the Gentiles, a thematic which the East celebrates on February 2, the feast the West calls the “Presentation of Jesus in the Temple” as recounted in Lk 2:22-38—but which in Greek is called the Hypophante or “Encounter”, the meeting of the Savior with those He has come to save.'
Stuart, it seems to me we should not consider it an "either/or" matter; as is so often the case with our faith, the Truth is better characterized with "both/and" statements: Jesus, standing outside of time, is *both* the baby, who He "later" tells us to emulate, *and* the Lord, whose coming we await in joyful hope. And St. Francis left us no mere "invention"—he shared a beautifully touching and highly edifying vision of Truth.
Very interesting that you should say that. If you look at Mathew 2:1 and Mathew 2:7, the star, or angel was not in the East now, but went before them towards the south because Bethlehem is south of Jerusalem. And then stopped and stood over the house/manager where Mary had given birth to Jesus. Yet if the star was a billion million miles above the earth, the wise men would not have been directed south five miles by a star that far away, and it wouldn't seem to stand over a manager outside of Bethlehem. And so surely the Star of Bethlehem was more like a moving angel that shone as bright as a star, to direct these men from the East to Jerusalem and then south to Bethlehem.
