Santa María de Huerta, Spain
Mysterious Magi. They pass so briefly across the brow of Matthew’s gospel, like the shadow of a bright dream. They come, and before we can catch our breath they're gone again.
The Magi are Gentiles so Matthew has not given them an angel. He reckoned angelic revelations were only for the Jews. Instead he has given them something they would understand - a star.
As stars go this one really is a bit of a miracle. But then aren’t they all! Scientists tell us they now know what stars are made of, things like
tungsten, copper, vanadium and fluorine, astatine, bromine, silver and cesium, silicone, magnesium, osmium, gallium, rhodium, titanium, palladium, cadmium, germanium, calcium, phosphorus, nitrogen, sulphur, carbon and possibly oxygen,
and that’s only a fraction of the unimaginable, blazingly white-hot story!
As if that were not miraculous enough it turns out that the Magi’s star is even more amazing. For starters it comes with a lengthy tail of biblical ancestry in a dazzling spiral of symbolism, poetic prophecy and exegetic analysis. It also seems to have a mind of its own. So we can hardly be blamed for thinking it might be even more miraculous than usual. And yet is it not more likely that the miracle was quite simply in the looking?
Being themselves in the business of stars the Magi would have taken this one in their stride. They simply followed it while it was there and did the best they could when it was not. It finally stopped “over the place where the child was”. And that was where the Gentiles found their king. He was only a child, still with his mother, but they saw him in the light of the star. In that light they understood. Then with faith just like devout Christians the Magi adored: opening their treasure boxes they offered him all they had, gold frankincense and myrrh, symbol and sum of their lives, and indeed of every life.
The visitors did not delay. Swiftly and silently they took their leave. They did in fact what all those who discover the mystery of the King do, they went home. What they went home to we can only guess at. I wonder if they felt like T.S. Eliot’s Magi:
“We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods…”
I sometimes wonder what we are supposed to look for in this enchanting story. According to Matthew, the Gentiles could not find Jesus without the special revelation of the Jewish Scriptures. They needed a guiding star for that. So we keep an eye on the star, just in case! But could the Evangelist be telling us to look at something else, less obvious, something he himself learned from the man Jesus? Does he not want us to see with our hearts and perceive the infinite value of the finite, the splendour of humanity which is great enough to reveal divinity? Is this not what the Magi did? It made different people out of them. I know it would make a different person out of me too if I looked hard enough. But maybe it takes a long and bewildering journey through the desert to make sense of it all.
The strangers are gone. They were different people who padded off home by the alternative route to the east. Or was it the same route seen with new eyes? Now they had another star, one that was to make all the difference in the world, the ‘bright morning star’ that never dims. As their camel bells jingled, and their long silken fringes tossed in the desert wind they knew that nothing would ever be the same again. They saw the spring jonquils break through the parched earth around them, and their hearts sang as the words of the prophet found meaning there:
“Drop down dew ye heavens from aboveand let the clouds rain the just onelet the earth be opened and bud forth a saviour”
And the wise men laughed aloud, for “they were filled with exceeding great joy”.
Nan MacKinnon rscj
Province of Ireland-Scotland
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