The Solemnity of
the Epiphany of the Lord
3 January 2016
The Cathedral
Basilica of Our Lady of Peace
Honolulu, Hawaii
Dear
brothers and sisters,
In
addition to being the liturgical celebration of the Epiphany – the
manifestation – of the Lord Jesus Christ to the nations, today is also the
birthday of two of my favorite people. Born in 1840, a young boy in Belgium took
great delight watching the sheep in the fields and felt the Lord call him to
serve his people as a priest. A bit headstrong and unafraid of hard work, he
joined the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and took his
brother’s place in the mission in the Sandwich Islands. His family called him Jef,
but to others he was known as Joseph de Veuster. we know him, of course, as
Saint Damien of Moloka’i, but we do not celebrate his birthday today.
Curiously, we do not celebrate his birthday into eternal life (15 April 1889),
either, as we do with other saints, but rather the day he first landed at
Kalaupapa, 10 May 1873.
The
other person was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa and moved to
England as a young boy after his father died. With his mother and his siblings,
he then converted to Catholicism and endured persecution from his family.
Following the death of his mother when he was ten years old, he came under the
care of Father Francis Xavier Morgan, a priest of the oratory founded by
Blessed John Henry Newman. The boy grew up and became a professor of Anglo-Saxon
language and literature in Merton College at Oxford University. He is perhaps
best known as the author of The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings, but his other
writings are slowly becoming better known, especially his reflections on his
Catholic faith. He, of course, is John Ronald Reuel (J.R.R.) Tolkien.
In
the spring of 1969, the daughter of his publisher wrote him asking his
assistance for a school project to answer an important question: “What is the
purpose of life?” He wrote back on May 20th, with this answer:
So it may be said
that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to
our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by
it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus
te, benedicams te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias tibi propter magnam
gloriam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your
glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendor.[1]
We
know that we cannot love that which we do not know. Increasing our knowledge of
God, then, leads to a greater love of God and the love of God brings us
happiness. What greater purpose of life could we imagine?
Given
the liturgical celebration of the day, we have to ask why the Magi looked up
into the heavens, studying and observing the movements of the stars and planets.
Was it not to increase their knowledge of God and discover the purpose and the
meaning of life?
As
the star heralding the Birth of the newborn King of the Jews rose in the
heavens, how many people saw it? Though many historians and astronomers today
try to find it in the conjunctions of planets and the movement of comets, it
was no ordinary star, no ordinary planet, and must, therefore, have been seen
by many people. We know it was no natural star because it could both move
across the arc of the sky and hover in one place; this star was supernatural
and, as such, it could hardly have been missed, especially in a day with no
electric lights or other electronic distractions.
Of
all the people that must have – or least should have -seen the Star of
Bethlehem, Saint Matthew only tells us that it was seen by the Magi, that they
knew what it signaled, and that they followed it (cf. Matthew 2:2). If others saw
and did what the Magi saw and did, the Evangelist would surely have noted – at
least in passing – the groups or crowds doing the same.
How
can it be that the star only aroused curiosity in these men from the East? Could
it be that they were the only ones to notice that the “glory of the Lord
[shone] upon [them]” (Isaiah 60:1). Others may have seen the star and ignored it,
not realizing what it was, but not the Magi. News of their questioning – and
therefore news also of what the star signaled – even reached the ears of King
Herod (cf. Matthew 2:1-3). Why, then, did no one else go out to see the Christ
Child, to meet him, to pay homage to him, to embrace him, and entrust
themselves to him? Why did they not “raise [their] eyes and look about” (Isaiah60:4)?
The
Magi saw the star at its rising, which means they must have been searching diligently
for it, even if they did not at first fully understand what it was. Because God
does not wish to overpower us but to invite us into a relationship of love, the
light of the star was not blinding, but gentle; it shone as a humble invitation
to all who saw it, to who had not become listless but still longed for the
answer to the question, What is the purpose of life?
Entering
the house they “saw the Child and Mary, his mother” (Matthew 2:11). As we heard
on Christmas Day, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God” (John 1:1). This Word, Jesus, “became flesh and dwelt
among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). It as this Word the Magi saw
and this Word before whom they lay prostrate.
In
Greek philosophy, the Word – the Logos
– referred not simply to a noun or verb, but more importantly to the reason
creating and sustaining everything that is. As they fell to the ground before the
Infant King, the Magi no longer looked to the stars for the meaning and purpose
of life, but to the very Creator of those stars present before them (cf.
Matthew 2:11). So must it be with us: If we wish to discover the meaning and
purpose of our lives, the reason for which we were created, we, too, can only
find it in the Holy Child of Bethlehem, in Him who is the Holy Eucharist.
The
Magi returned home “by another way” not only because they feared the wrath of
King Herod, but because they simply could not return by the same way (Matthew2:12). In their encounter with the Christ Child, everything changed for them. They
found their purpose in knowing, loving, and serving the Word made flesh, the
newborn King of the Jews, and so they could not return by the way they came. They
themselves were no longer the same. They shone with the radiance of the Lord,
and were moved to give him thanks and praise through their very lives (cf.
Isaiah 60:3).
Is
this not what happened with Father Damien? He did not look to the stars for the
purpose of life, but looked for it in the Mystical Body of Christ; he looked
for the purpose and meaning of life in the exiles at Kalawao. By zealously
dedicating himself to their care and salvation, he increased his knowledge of
God and was also moved to give praise and thanks to God. We can be certain that
Father Damien discovered the meaning and purpose of life in the faces of those
joined to their Creator in Baptism because he said, “My greatest pleasure is to
serve the Lord in his poor children rejected by other people.”
We
might say that Father Damien saw the light of the Lord shining in the darkness
of Kalaupapa, inviting him to make a gift of himself to the Lord in his
suffering children. Father Damian accepted this invitation and so the light and
glory of the Lord shone upon him and was reflected in his words and actions (cf.
Isaiah 60:1). The radiance of the Lord’s glory reflected in Father Damien
became a light by which the lepers could walk, a light by which they increase
their knowledge of God, a light by which they were moved to praise and thanks;
by Father Damien’s light, they could raise their eyes and see, they could
praise, bless, adore, and glorify the Lord.
In
the same way, we, too, must bow before the Child of Bethlehem and make a gift
of ourselves to him and to his people. In him alone will we find the meaning
and purpose of life. Only by increasing our knowledge of him will we come to
love him more and more and find our greatest pleasure in praising and thanking
him.
By
the intercession of the Holy Magi and of Father Damien, may each of us search
diligently for the Lord, rejoice in finding him, and manifest him to others so
that all people might walk joyfully in the light of his love. Amen!
[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to Camilla
Unwin, 20 May 1969. Letter 311 in The
Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Humphrey Carpenter, ed. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2000), 399.
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