Is 60:1-6, Eph 3:2-3,5-6; Mt 2:1-12
So many people heard about the birth of the baby Jesus. But not all who heard about His birth were joyful,“ When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.” Why were the king and his people troubled at the birth of the messiah?
They were troubled because, though they heard about Him, they made no attempt to look for Him. They had all the information that they wanted about Him – the time of His birth and the prophesied place of His birth. They settled for mere information while ignoring the communion with God that this baby alone brings to the world.
But the magi were joyful as they searched for Jesus. They were not satisfied with mere information of the birth of a newborn king. They opened themselves to true joy as they went in search of the one to whom the star pointed them. Even the mere sight of His star filled them with joy, “They were overjoyed in seeing the star.”
The magi show us three important things that we should keep in mind in our spiritual lives.
They looked for Jesus to worship Him.
This was the very purpose of their mission, “We saw His star at its rising and have come to do Him homage.” They made all these sacrifices to worship the baby Jesus.
To worship God is to acknowledge His infinite excellence and our nothingness before Him. When we do not worship God as we should, we succumb to pride in its many forms, and we begin to play God. We pretend that we are in control of our lives and that we can determine what is good and evil on our own. This leaves us both frustrated and fearful.
They looked for Jesus to offer Him gifts.
They magi did not just worship Jesus. They also offered to Him the treasures that they preserved throughout their journey, “Then they opened their treasures and offered Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”
Our worship too must go beyond attending the highest form of prayer, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Holy Mass fills us with the Spirit so that our lives too are a constant sacrifice to God. We are graced and sanctified in each Eucharist to make sacrifices pleasing to God, beginning with that sacrifice of a pure and chaste life that must accompany our complete gift of self to Him.
They looked for Jesus so as to be led and guided by Him.
Their encounter with the baby Jesus changed them and the direction of their lives, “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.” They came to Jesus led externally by the star and they left interiorly directed by the Spirit.
We too must allow Jesus to change us completely and to guide us in all our choices. We cannot seek for Him when we have grown complacent and satisfied with our mediocre spiritual lives. We must cultivate that desire to be his generous and fervent disciples.
The birth of Jesus is a moment of grace to all humanity. Because of the grace of His birth, “the Gentiles are now coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ through the gospel.”(Eph 5-6) This means that, in Jesus Christ, God is fully accessible to all of humanity now. No single person alive today has any valid excuse not to look for Jesus. We have to look for Him now, even if we do not have all the information about Him. We can look for Him and enter into that beatifying communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in any place and time.
We must also persevere in our search for Jesus. Like the magi, we will sometimes lose sight of our guiding stars. We will fill ourselves surrounded by darkness and even confused. We may even feel like we made a mistake in committing to this search for Jesus in the first place. We may feel like fools to others as we seek for greater union with Jesus. It is only by persevering in our search for Him that we will again see our stars leading us to Him. Remember His promise to us, “Seek and you will find.”(Mt 7:7) He will never leave us frustrated and regretful as we search for Him.
Like the magi, we must also strive to overcome the many distractions that intrude in our journey to Jesus. They were not distracted by the troubled and disturbed faces of Herod and his countrymen or their scheming and plotting to kill the baby Jesus.
We cannot fathom the great distraction caused by the Vatican’s Fiducia Supplicans. Instead of helping us to prepare our hearts to welcome the birth of the baby Jesus and cultivate our longing for Him, the Vatican chose the sacred days before Christmas to deceptively ask us to do the impossible thing of blessing those who have embraced the homosexual lifestyle without actually blessing their sinful union. Yes, even the Church can be a source of unnecessary distraction in following Jesus today. We cannot let anything distract from our search for Jesus.
God is not only present with us. He is also laboring to draw us to Himself. He will use anything as guiding “stars” to draw us to Himself. He is drawing us to Himself through the Scriptures we read, the sacraments we celebrate and receive, the events of our lives, and the persons we encounter. He is drawing us to Himself through the love we have of His Blessed Mother whom the magi found to be inseparable from Him, “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary His mother.”(Mt 2:1-12)
If we do not personally search for Jesus now, we will futilely look for true joy and peace in worldly pleasures and possessions. We will fall into that age-old trap of thinking we can find rest for our troubled hearts in possessing and enjoying created things. We end up more troubled and emptier, just like Herod and his subjects.
Our Eucharistic Savior is always present with us, drawing us to Himself. Through Him and in Him, we are in communion with the Triune God. We must never be satisfied with hearing about Him from others. We must never settle for hearsay from clergy and religious people. Let us search for Him personally just like the Magi did so that we too can be overwhelmed with joy.
Glory to Jesus! Honor to Mary!
