Epiphany: The Child With His Mother
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/010823.cfm
I always delight in meditating upon this beautiful feast of the Epiphany.
The feast has a complicated history, and for many centuries was observed with even greater solemnity than it is today. And, with good reason, because it has helped form the way we think. The Jewish people largely saw salvation as belonging to the Jews. We, on the other hand, have no difficulty believing that God would come to all nations, not just Texas, to make us all sisters and brothers in Christ through baptism. That is largely because our understanding of God’s salvation is shaped by the fact that these magi, these philosopher-scientists, strangers from another country, were led by God to the place where Jesus could be found. Through them, we understand that Jesus is a light to all nations.
But, I noticed something new this year…
Upon entering the house, the magi saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
The word child there is paidion (pahee-dee’-on), and it is usually translated as “little child” – it refers to a very young child, as opposed to a pais, meaning simply a child. So the magi enter, and they prostrate themselves to reverence the little child Jesus, then present their gifts.
Where is Jesus? Is he playing with the sheep or his father’s tools? Is he hiding behind a curtain? Is he running around the house? No, he is in his mother’s arms, of course. Thus, the magi prostrated themselves before his mother, Mary. Because that is where the little child Jesus is found. It is impossible to do homage to the child Jesus without also kneeling before his mother.
In the first reading, we hear: Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you… upon you the LORD shines, and over you appears his glory… Nations shall walk by your light… they all gather and come to you: your sons come from afar… Caravans shall fill you… bearing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming the praises of the LORD.
In the Hebrew, you and your are expressed in the second person feminine singular throughout this passage from Isaiah. Jerusalem is addressed as an individual female human person. Thus, the fathers of the church came to see from scriptures, especially in the revelation given to Saint John, that the Mary who received gold and frankincense on behalf of her son is in fact an icon or a personification of the heavenly Jerusalem and the Church. Mary is the perfect dwelling place for our Lord, created and chosen for that purpose. She is the one to whom we come from all nations to offer gifts for the king she bears. She is actually in her person, and also represents to us, the ideal worshiper of Jesus Christ.
Saint Augustine says it well. He says:
Stretching out his hand over his disciples, the Lord Christ declared: Here are my mother and my brothers; anyone who does the will of my Father who sent me is my brother and sister and my mother… Ponder these words. Did the Virgin Mary, who believed by faith and conceived by faith, who was the chosen one from whom our Savior was born among men, who was created by Christ before Christ was created in her – did she not do the will of the Father? Indeed the blessed Mary certainly did the Father’s will… it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been his mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood. Hers was the happiness of first bearing in her womb him whom she would obey as her master.
Saint Augustine continues… Now listen and see if the words of Scripture do not agree with what I have said. The Lord was passing by and crowds were following him. His miracles gave proof of divine power. and a woman cried out: Happy is the womb that bore you, blessed is that womb! But the Lord, not wishing people to seek happiness in a purely physical relationship, replied: More blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Mary heard God’s word and kept it, and so she is blessed. She kept God’s truth in her mind, a nobler thing than carrying his body in her womb. The truth and the body were both Christ: he was kept in Mary’s mind insofar as he is truth, he was carried in her womb insofar as he is man; but what is kept in the mind is of a higher order than what is carried in the womb
The Virgin Mary is both holy and blessed, and yet the Church is greater than she. Mary is a part of the Church, a member of the Church, a holy, an eminent – the most eminent – member, but still only a member of the entire body. The body undoubtedly is greater than she, one of its members. This body has the Lord for its head, and head and body together make up the whole Christ…
Now, beloved, give me your whole attention, for you also are members of Christ; you also are the body of Christ. Consider how you yourselves can be among those of whom the Lord said: Here are my mother and my brothers. Do you wonder how you can be the mother of Christ? He himself said: Whoever hears and fulfills the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother. As for our being the brothers and sisters of Christ, we can understand this because although there is only one inheritance and Christ is the only Son… It was his wish that we too should be… co-heirs with himself.
Now having said that all of you are brothers of Christ, shall I not dare to call you his mother? Much less would I dare to deny his own words. Tell me how Mary became the mother of Christ, if it was not by giving birth to the members of Christ [, the body of Christ]? You, to whom I am speaking, are the members of Christ. Of whom were you born? “Of Mother Church…” You became [children] of this mother at your baptism, you [were born again as] as members of Christ. Now you in your turn must draw to the font of baptism as many as you possibly can. You became [children] when you were born there yourselves, and now by bringing others to birth in the same way, you have it in your power to become the mothers of Christ.
Thus say I, then, and not Saint Augustine: Christmas is ending. The child and his family are about to flee into Egypt. We are about to return to “ordinary” time. If you do only one thing better this year, do this: Go, then, to the mother of our Lord, and gaze with her upon this beautiful child she has borne, just as the magi did. Shower her with gifts for her son in the form of the spiritual blossoms of her holy Rosary as you meditate upon her life. Pray that she will teach you through her rosary how to become truly wise, and to hear and fulfill the will of the Father. Pray that she will, even through you, lead our sisters and brothers back into a right relationship with Christ, and that you may even become mothers of Christ by bringing children of every nation to Christ through the waters of baptism into new life.
