Celebrating Epiphany

Dear Friends, 

Today is the last day of the Christmas cycle. We end this richly inspiring time in company with the Magi. It is likely that they arrived some two years after Jesus’ birth. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus had replaced residence in the stable in Bethlehem with a small house in town. It’s not clear why they stayed in Bethlehem instead of going home after Joseph registered in the census, but they didn’t. It was there, long after the shepherds had moved on, that the star led the Magi to “the house where they saw the child with Mary his mother.” Matthew 2.11

The journey had been arduous. Most journeys are. But the Magi had the luxury of going back home. Many journeyers don’t. 

I think today of the refugees of our day. Every continent has them – men, women, and children, fleeing from persecution, destitution, political pressure, hunger. The movement in our day seems to be largely from south to north. Treacherous treks on foot and across unforgiving seas.

In 2021, Pope Francis was drawn to the Island of Lesbos, one of the numerous islands dotting the coastal waters of Greece. Lesbos was a point of arrival, a holding area for newcomers to Europe. Pope Francis waded into the midst of the people. “I have to see your face,” he told one after another. “That’s why I came. I have to see your face.”

Who do you suppose Pope Francis saw, as he looked into the faces of the young, the mature, the old, the sick? He saw Jesus the Incarnate Word of God, perhaps newborn, but certainly the one who suffered, would die, and be raised up. Knowingly or unknowingly, the refugees live the mystery of Christ’s gift of himself to the world.

I wonder what Jesus saw when, as a two-year-old, he encountered the Magi. Were they swarthy? With weather-beaten faces? Could he see different ethnic groups and races traced in their facial makeup, their size, their bone-structure? In a sense, it wouldn’t have mattered, except that Jesus came for everyone, not just his fellow Jews. The presence of the Magi at the beginning of Jesus’ life was no accident, no fabrication of the evangelist Matthew. It was part of the truth revealed in Jesus’ infancy. He was for everyone from distant lands as well close by towns and neighborhoods.

To this first encounter with the Word Made Flesh, the Magi brought their knowledge and experience of life, their searching and their questions, their openness to the new and untried, their gifts. Isn’t that what refugees bring? Isn’t that what we bring to the beginning of this new year of our own personal journeys through life. In the wealth of our lives, we are more alike than different. 

The lure, the demands of our culture, the need to protect our own turf won’t go away because we want them to. Epiphany is God’s call to us at the beginning of this new year to stay on the longer journey to God, to peer into the faces of other travelers who are strangers to us and to find them kindred. To find them kindred, a star will guide us. We can trust that! God is faithful.

~ Sister Joan Sobala