KINGS FOR A DAY?

I have from time to time in this blog translated meditations by the French Benedictine hermit Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau; and I found her remarks on this Sunday's Epiphany celebration particularly perceptive. So I offer them here in my own translation, in the hope that others will find them as helpful as I do.

Matthew 2:1-12

THE OFFERING THAT PLEASES GOD

The Epiphany liturgy gives us a coherent collection of prayers and readings to meditate, centred on Christ, the light of nations. It invites us to note the universality of salvation, which is the basis of our unconditional acceptance of ourselves and others.

Preparation

‘You wanted neither offering nor sacrifice, you have opened my ears: you asked for neither holocaust nor victim, so I said, ‘Here I am: I come.’ (Ps 40:7-8)

Observation

Let us look at the Magi’s response to the proposed salvation discerned in the sign of the star, to the hope it awoke in them, to the point of committing them to an adventure upon unknown roads. Men of open mind, seekers after truth, humble enough to ask men far less cultured than themselves for what they did not know, they are not unlike a fair number of our contemporaries in their quest.

            Their gesture of adoration and offering particularly draws our attention. The diversity of their gifts represents the unique something that each person can bring to God. And let us not forget the Church Fathers’ interpretation which identifies the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh as the recognition of, respectively, the royalty, the divinity and the humanity of a Christ destined to death.

Meditation

Let us ask ourselves what we offer the Lord and in what spirit we do it. Are we Christians who are rooted in the thankfulness of being in the world, conscious of receiving everything from God and having only loving to do? Or are we like those who want to lay hands on him, to justify themselves in his eyes – and in their own --, proving to the whole world their value and their superiority like the Pharisee in Luke’s Gospel (Lk 16)? Are we able to give ourselves to the Lord just as we are, in the truth of our being at the same time sinners and made in his image: clay vessels bearing a treasure, the valuable mixed with the vile? If our response is negative, let us not be discouraged. Let us rather ask to be granted the inward freedom of those who know themselves unconditionally beloved in their singularity and who, consequently, are able to receive others with that goodness of which the wellspring is in God.

Prayer

‘Blessed be the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has blessed and filled us with the blessings of the Spirit in Heaven, in Christ.’ (Eph. 1:3)