Watch, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and let your angels protect those who sleep. Tend the sick. Refresh the weary. Sustain the dying. Calm the suffering. Pity the distressed. We ask this for the sake of your love.
St. Augustine
So the Wise-Ones were directed from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Did they find the Christ in a stable? In a house surrounded by relatives? Or did the biblical narrative of Matthew not only compress the timetable of the Wise-Ones journey (after all if the ChristStar rose at Christ’s birth, Jesus would no longer be a new-born baby by the time they reached Bethlehem), but also misdirect the meeting place for the sake of fulfilling the prophetic scriptures which Herod’s counsellors had consulted?
Biblical scholar Nicola DePue considers that it was likely that the Wise-Ones eventually found the Messiah as a child living with his parents in Nazareth. They find him in a house – no mention of a stable, or of animals (Matthew 2.11). After all, why wouldn’t Joseph take his family home once the census, which took him to Bethlehem in the first place, was complete (even if they did have an extended stay with relatives there whilst Mary recovered from the birth)?
But no matter where or when the Wise-Ones finally find the child they have journeyed so far to encounter, in the end they come to face to face.
I try to imagine Mary’s reaction to a group of foreigners arriving at her door, demanding to see her child, claiming they have journeyed hundreds of miles for that exact purpose. I imagine her fear and confusion. I imagine she remembered the angels and shepherds’ incident the night Jesus was born. I imagine she remembered the strange words her cousin’s Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah prophesied over her child, the coming Messiah, before he was born.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1.78-79 NRSVA)
I imagine she remembered marvelling as Simeon and Anna prophesied over her forty-day old baby, calling him
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel. (Luke 2.32 NIV)
But nonetheless Mary allows the Wise-Ones to enter, she gives them welcome, and by so-doing allows a moment of true interfaith communion to take place:
On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. (Matthew 2.11 NRSVA)
This is the pivotal moment the Wise-Ones have been waiting for. But I wonder if I was Mary, would I have allowed it to take place? I wonder if she had a moment of epiphany, suddenly understanding that these foreigners could also worship her God, could also believe the scriptures which foretold the coming Messiah? And if they could come and worship her God, weren’t they also loved by her God?
Thomas Merton describes having this kind of realisation about his fellow human-beings:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. . . . This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God . . . became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. . . . Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.
I wonder if Mary too, realised the futility of this ‘illusion of separateness’? I wonder if she too, saw that the Wise-Ones ‘were walking around shining like the sun’? I wonder if, years later, when she saw her son ministering not just to his own people, his own tribe, but to gentile strangers and foreigners too, I wonder if she remembered the way she welcomed the Wise-Ones, and the nature of their worship, the quality of their ‘homage’?
For despite the fact that Wise-Ones’ religious beliefs and wisdom-traditions are utterly foreign to Mary’s ears and eyes, their worship confirms her child as a King of the Jews, of her race, her tribe, her religion. Their worship deepens her faith.
And so, by welcoming the Wise-Ones into her home, by giving them hospitality and shelter, by seeing them as weary and dirty travellers, by respecting their religious beliefs and wisdom-traditions, Mary gives the Wise-Ones far more than they received in the royal courts in Jerusalem. And in her turn, receives enlightenment.
O Day-Spring, Brightness of Light everlasting, and Sun of Righteousness: Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.
There can be few words of such universal significance as ‘light’. It is both a common metaphor and a potent religious symbol. One of the most beautiful prayers in the Hindu scriptures is ‘Lead me from the unreal to the real, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death to immortality’, words which have been incorporated into the baptismal liturgy of the Church of South India. The Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, which, incidentally, usually falls quite close to Advent, celebrates the hope of returning light when the days are getting shorter. Muslims affirm ‘God is the light of the heavens and earth’ (Qur’an 24:35). The religion of ancient Persia, Zoroastrianism, calls God ‘Ahura Mazda’, Wise Lord and Lord of Light, and the sacred, ever burning fire symbolizes the eternal divine light. The first specific thing which God created, according to the Genesis account, was light (Genesis 1:3).
The universal idea of light as closely related to God finds its fulfillment in the Jewish and Christian scriptures and preeminently in Christ, the light of the world. The Antiphon O Oriens brings out a special aspect of the light of Christ by its use of the word Oriens, rising sun, day-spring, dawn. It is new light … Jesus is the dawn which we long for above all things. He is the new light that fills us with hope … The new light also guides us when we have been floundering in the darkness of ignorance, uncertainty and indecision by leading us into the way of peace, the wholeness of communion with God.
From O Come Emmanuel: Scripture Verses for Advent Worship, William Marshall
image by Kate Kennington Steer
image into ikon 