Herod or Magi?

It's all in our perspective!  Perspective changes perception.

The Magi expected the Messiah, looked for Him, prepared for signs.  In their watchfulness they observed the rising of the star.  They followed as it led them to a child, whom they recognized as the child king.

Herod was not prepared for a Messiah, whom he viewed as a threat.  He was intent on destroying any rival.  He did not see the star's rising.

A basic difference in views: One self-centered, inward looking, fearful and closed; the other self-less, outward looking, watchful and open  The latter perspective involves risk, for it takes us out of ourselves.  But in allowing the star to be revealed, it offers the possibility of reward.  The Magi follow the star and encounter the baby Jesus, whom they recognized as Lord of all.  In their joy they offer the finest they have, and prostrate themselves, paying him homage.

Can we find the star that even today is rising and offering direction to an encounter with Jesus?  Pope Benedict in his series of catechetical talks on the Year of Faith (this from October18, 2012 second par.) writes that the star is the church, the “teacher of humanity,” which proclaims the Word (in the gospels and Creed), celebrates the Sacraments; and performs works of charity.  The church's light illumines the way to an encounter with Jesus, which involves recognizing him as a living person in relation to ourselves.

For knowing can be a merely intellectual act, while 'recognizing' involves discovering the profound connection between the truths that we profess in the Creed and our daily lives, such that these truths truly and tangibly become -- as they have always been -- light for the steps of our lives, water that quenches our burning thirst along our journey, and life that overcomes some of the deserts of our modern day.  The moral life of the believer is grafted onto the Creed, and it finds its foundation and justification therein.  

Ibid. (emphasis added)

Our search arises out of our fundamental yearning or desire as humans for the good, for God.  But desire needs a guiding star. (The Latin word for desire, desiderata has "star" at its core (sidera), showing that desire has an infinite yearning, a reaching out "to the stars".)   The guide, Benedict observes in his Nov. 7th catechesis, is the good of the other, which if honored and enacted in truth, makes another's good my own, and in its tutelage of self forgetfulness, liberates my desire, raises it up, purifies it, so it may reach its true end.

The answer to the question about the meaning of the experience of love thus passes through the purification and healing of the will, required by the very love which I have for the other.  We must practice this, we must train, and even correct ourselves, so that we may truly desire that good.  The initial ecstasy thus becomes a pilgrimage, 'an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.'

Ibid. The pope suggests we ought to develop a "kind of pedagogy of desire" to help move us along our path towards an encounter with Christ.  First, we need to re-learn "the taste for the authentic joys of life."  He includes in these joys, "friendship, the experience of beauty, the love of knowledge."  Ibid.  But, second, we must "never be satisfied with what has been achieved.  It is precisely the truest joys that are capable of freeing in us that healthy unrest that leads us to be more demanding -- to desire a higher, more profound good -- and at the same time, to perceive with increasing clarity that nothing finite can fill our hearts."  Ibid.  Benedict says, "it is not a matter of stifling desire, but of liberating it" so we can travel, the pilgrims we are, to our true "heavenly homeland," "that full, eternal good, which nothing will ever be able to snatch from us."  Ibid.

Our journey is completed in gift-giving.  The Epiphany is the source of our Christmas tradition of gift-giving.  As our journey is fulfilled, we receive the gift of God's presence, of recognizing the face of Jesus, and we want to give him gifts . . . chiefly, the gift of ourselves, the only gift he truly desires, in his true love for us.  

The history of our church is full of the great variety of gifts Christians have given in recognizing the face of Jesus:

The Magi of the Gospel are but the first in a vast pilgrimage in which the beauty of this earth is laid at the feet of Christ: the gold of the ancient Christian mosaics, the multicolored light from the windows of our great cathedrals, the praise of their stone, the Christmas songs of the trees of the forest are all inspired by him, and human voices like musical instruments have found their most beautiful melodies when they cast themselves at his feet.  The suffering of the world too -- its misery -- comes to him in order, for a moment, to find security and understanding in the presence of the God who is poor.

Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth, for Jan. 7

Let us resolve, as this new year of our Lord 2013 begins, to join the journey of the Magi, and to seal our recognition of Jesus's face by, as Mother Theresa urged, "doing something beautiful for God."