Mt 2:1-12
Dear Friends, The Epiphany is commonly known as the feast of the Three Kings. The scriptural text says nothing about the number three. It also makes no mention that they are kings nor anything about their racial makeup. These are various cultural expressions developed over the centuries. The Gospel message of the feast is about the universality of God’s saving grace and love. All peoples are invited to the heavenly banquet.
Cultural and folkloric expressions have always enriched the proclamation of the Gospel. Often, these additions have been enlightening to the basic message of salvation. On the other hand, the message also has been deeply distorted with the overlay of pietistic exaggerations and even contradictions rooted in national and cultural prejudices.
One of the major hopes of Vatican II was to get us back to the central Gospel message, to put Jesus at the center. One of the most important developments of that holy gathering occurred a decade later when Pope Paul VI gave us one of the all-time great papal documents on the topic of Evangelization. Paul VI pointed out that the message of the Gospel is never free of cultural expressions but that we have to work to always go beyond any particular cultural, national or racial expression that limits the Gospel.
Whether it is the St. Patrick’s Day Parade or the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Cristo Negro of Esquipulas, or the celebration of Our Lady of Lourdes they all have a pull to limit the Gospel to some partial view of one group or nation. Today’s feast of the Epiphany opens us up to universality. We are invited to include everyone. This is no small challenge.
At the center of today’s feast is not the three kings, but the elusive truth that all human beings share a common dignity and destiny. Every human being is called to union with God. There is a gospel inclusiveness that is a never ending challenge to the followers of Christ. Our great obstacle is the endless ways that we divide and degrade, often in the name of Jesus.
Jesus relentlessly proclaimed the dignity of women and children. Jesus constantly attacked sin, disease and ethnicity as barriers to the common unity of all. The Church and all other religions and ideologies have struggled mightily down through history even to this mornings news with this call to universal acceptance.
Today’s Gospel account of the Magi is much more than a lovely tale about strange visitors coming in an unexpected way to a poor family. This is a message of Good News that informs us that this child is the long-awaited Son of David, the promised ruler and savior of Israel. He will open the gift of salvation to all peoples. All are welcome at the table. There are no people without residential papers at the crib! All are welcome!
Today’s Gospel tells us we need not travel far to seek Jesus. Exotic places do not have to be part of our search. The Epiphany, the revelation of Jesus, is always taking place in the midst of our life. Jesus is all around us. We need only look with faith to embrace Him in our brothers and sisters especially the poor and needy among us.
Some five decades ago, Vatican II stated the truth of this feast in this insightful and beautiful declaration:
"The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially those who are poor and afflicted in any way, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts."
Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965
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