Feast of the Epiphany - Follow your star!

Before the feast of the Epiphany, or to use an English word “showing” I try to read T.S. Eliot’s poem  “The Journey of the Magi” because it teaches me a very valuable lesson which I keep forgetting.  It teaches me that to follow one’s star until the very end, means that one has to accept disappointment, pain, tedium, regret, cold, the loss of all that we want most at times.  And only those who persevere and keep the dream alive in their hearts find that star.

We put the three kings in the Crib, and we sigh sentimentally.  “Don’t they look sweet!” we sigh.  “Oh look at that young one, he’s so handsome! I love it when he comes into the Crib.  I wonder what Jesus made of all those exotic clothes and presents, and those crowns!“  And so we go on....  But we forget the journey don’t we, the long, cold nights, the weary pain-filled days, the disillusions on the way, the homesickness...  Theologians tell us that it must have taken the best part of two years to travel in those days from the East to Bethlehem. Easy Jet was a long way into the future, and 24-hour journeys were unknown!  It must have been a nightmare from start to finish.   

 T. S. Eliot, with his American freshness of outlook, tells us about it. He imagines one of the kings in old age sitting down in his Eastern palace one night when the stars are out, and as he gazes into the heavens, he remembers what it was like.  He recalls the journey that changed his life and the lives of all those around him.  He remembers the agony and the ecstasy of it.  The poem begins:

                       “A cold coming we had of it,

                        Just the worst time of the year for a journey, and what a long journey.
                        The way was deep, and the weather sharp
                        The very dead of Winter.
                        And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
                        lying down in the melting snow.

                        There were times when we regretted
                        the Summer palaces the stopes, the terraces,
                        and the silken girls bringing sherbet.
                        Then the camel-men, cursing and grumbling,
                        And running away, wanting their liquor and their women..."

Reading this we say to ourselves: “What has changed in all those years since this happened?” Not a lot, if we go on further in the poem:

                        "...and the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
                        and the cities, hostile, and the towns unfriendly
                        and the villages dirty, and charging high prices
                        A hard time we had of it.
                        At the end, we preferred to travel all night
                        sleeping in snatches
                        with the voices singing in our ears, saying
                        that this was all folly..."

Temptation!  They were at their weakest, and they began to regret the venture.  Familiar territory for us?  We have all experienced that!   We, like the kings, set off on our journey, following our dreams, with high hopes, but the reality is very different.  We begin to think that the price we have to pay is just too high.  That was the time the kings had to grit their teeth and just go on, blindly following their star.  And we know the end of the story.  The star stopped over a stable (what did these eastern potentates make of that, I wonder!)  and they found the baby with Mary, his mother (and presumably St. Joseph as well).

T.S. Eliot ends the poem with a challenging and provoking question: “ Was this a birth” he said “or a death?”

What do you think he meant by that?  Think about it.

It was certainly a birth, but it was also the death of the old way of thinking and acting, the death of the old interpretation of the law:  the death of so many things....  Think of what that means in your own life.

So I’ll end where I began.  Epiphany means the showing of the Christ Child to others beside his own people.  It is all about going out, bringing the Gospel message to the ends of the earth.  Following the star.

What is your star?  What dreams do you have for your life?  Are you prepared to follow your own particular star with the same determination and courage that the three kings showed?  If not, then you won’t reach your star, and that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? 

So we pray:

Lord, at this time when we celebrate the journey of the three Wise Men, we pray for their perseverance, their courage, their determination to go on, making the dream possible, in spite of so many things that militate against it.  Help us each day to put our hands in yours and to start afresh on our journey, so that, one day, we will, with all those who started along the long, winding road with us, glimpse the star shining over another stable, and come in to see you, with Mary your Mother.  We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

A very happy Epiphany!  I suppose you will be keeping it on Sunday, but today, on the 6^th January I wish all our readers the joy of journeying and one day reaching the end, together!  God bless.

The Night before Christmas

Clement Moore's poem has brought into focus the Scriptural image of Christmas as a time of reflection and quiet as well as one of rejoicing:

                                 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
                                 not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.." it begins.

 It echoes the wonderful antiphon for Christmastide which is often used for Christmas Eve liturgies:

"When peaceful silence lay over all, and night had run half of her swift course, your all-powerful word, O Lord, leaped down from Heaven, from the royal throne."

It is when the rush is over, 'the' busy world is hushed' as Newman put it, that the awesome silence of the Godhead descends upon our earth.  It is the still point of the turning world, the point of intersection between God and us that we call Incarnation;  the opening up to the endless possibilities which the meeting of God and our poor, shadowed world throws up.  But to see them, to reach out to this God who comes to us as a baby, born in a stable, with only the steaming breath of two animals to warm him in this bitter night of mid-Winter, we have to experience the silence and 'otherness' of eternity;  we are touching another world.

Notice how often the carols we sing so enthusiastically at this time talk about the silence in which Bethlehem in particular, is wrapped at the coming of Jesus.

"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!" we sing, and have you ever noticed that when we use those words, a silence and an awe descends on us too?  Then there is, of course "Silent Night" - our translation of the more profound original title "Stille nacht, Heilege nacht" which evokes the stillness that surrounds the wonder of this holy night.  It is a prayer in itself,  which has become a household word in every country where it is sung, especially on the night before Christmas.  Incidentally, it was first sung on Christmas Eve - you probably know that already - but the waves of prayer and the affection in which it is held reach far beyond that little village in Austria where Josef Mohr and his small  choir first sang it to the lilting strains of the violin, because the mice had eaten away at the organ bellows!  What a story, and what a powerful prayer!  For most of us, it is Christmas, it still has the power to draw us into the silence of the first night of Jesus' life.  It is a meditation in itself, isn't it?

Have you ever walked beneath the stars on a crisp, cold Christmas Eve night, and felt the special message of this time?  An old man who was a farmer in the West of Ireland once told me that the animals quieten as midnight approaches, and kneel down to celebrate the birth of the Saviour.  I really believed him as a child, but I never managed to catch them at it!  I lived in Birmingham at Christmas-time then. I saw the cattle in the Summer when they were out in the field; small chance I'd have of proving whether or not it was true.  Still it is a lovely idea, if apocryphal! 

I suppose we value the silence of late Christmas Eve and of other times when we really look at the Crib, and try to imagine what it must have been like for Our Lady to give birth under such circumstances, when we enter into the quiet peace that surrounded his birth.  Then we cry out with the angels "Glory to God on high, and peace to all those who are of good will!" because we have felt it,  and as a consequence, we are carried beyond ourselves and our small concerns.  That is the message of Christmas.  To go beyond ourselves, to reach out to those most in need, to kindle our small lights so that others may not stumble in the darkness.

We don't have to say "What can I give him, poor as I am?"  We know.   Have a very happy, peaceful and blessed Christmas, and let's remember to pray for those who cannot pray for themselves, or do not feel the need to do so.  Our prayer for them is a gift, wrapped in lovely, shiny Christmas paper, and we don't have the fag of wrapping it up!