Christian Art | Epiphany | The Magi Visit The Lord Jesus Christ
Office Of Readings | 7th January Or Monday After Epiphany | A Reading From The Sermons Of Saint Peter Chrysologus | In Choosing To Be Born For Us, God Chose To Be Known By Us
‘In choosing to be born for us, God chose to be known by us.’
Saint Peter Chrysologus reflects on the Incarnation as God’s deliberate choice to make himself known in a way human beings can receive. Although Christ’s divine nature was always present, it is disclosed through concrete events that speak to human senses and understanding. God does not remain hidden in abstraction, but enters history so that knowledge of him may be grounded in what can be seen, heard, and encountered.
The sermon brings together several manifestations of Christ that belong to the same mystery. The visit of the Magi shows that the one revealed in glory is the same one found in humility. The child lying in the manger is identical with the star that guided the wise men. Chrysologus stresses this unity to guard against misunderstanding: the divine is not diminished by becoming human, nor is the human erased by divine presence.
The gifts of the Magi are interpreted as confessions of faith. Gold, incense, and myrrh are not merely symbolic gestures but acknowledgements of who Christ truly is: king, God, and one who will die. In this way, the Gentiles are shown to respond rightly to the revelation given to them. Their faith anticipates the wider belief of the nations and marks the beginning of the Church’s universal scope.
Chrysologus then moves from Epiphany to the baptism of Christ. The Jordan becomes another place of revelation, where Christ is publicly identified as the Son. John’s role is carefully defined: he does not cleanse Christ, but receives cleansing himself. The humility of Christ is again emphasised, as God submits to human hands in order to restore humanity.
The descent of the Spirit is linked to earlier biblical signs. As the dove once announced the end of the flood, it now signifies the end of humanity’s separation from God. The anointing of Christ marks the beginning of a new order, fulfilled not in symbols alone but in the reality of salvation.
Finally, the transformation of water into wine points forward to the Eucharist. Chrysologus presents Christ’s signs as ordered toward sacramental life, where the same Lord who was revealed in history continues to give himself for the life of the world.
A Reading From The Sermons Of Saint Peter Chrysologus | In Choosing To Be Born For Us, God Chose To Be Known By Us
In the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation there were clear indications of his eternal Godhead. Yet the great events we celebrate today disclose and reveal in different ways the fact that God himself took a human body. Mortal man, enshrouded always in darkness, must not be left in ignorance, and so be deprived of what he can understand and retain only by grace.
In choosing to be born for us, God chose to be known by us. He therefore reveals himself in this way, in order that this great sacrament of his love may not be an occasion for us of great misunderstanding.
Today the Magi find, crying in a manger, the one they have followed as he shone in the sky. Today the Magi see clearly, in swaddling clothes, the one they have long awaited as he lay hidden among the stars.
Today the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the whole universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body. As they look, they believe and do not question, as their symbolic gifts bear witness: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for one who is to die.
So the Gentiles, who were the last, become the first: the faith of the Magi is the first fruits of the belief of the Gentiles.
Today Christ enters the Jordan to wash away the sin of the world. John himself testifies that this is why he has come: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Today a servant lays his hand on the Lord, a man lays his hand on God, John lays his hand on Christ, not to forgive but to receive forgiveness.
Today, as the psalmist prophesied: The voice of the Lord is heard above the waters. What does the voice say? This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.
Today the Holy Spirit hovers over the waters in the likeness of a dove. A dove announced to Noah that the flood had disappeared from the earth; so now a dove is to reveal that the world’s shipwreck is at an end for ever. The sign is no longer an olive-shoot of the old stock: instead, the Spirit pours out on Christ’s head the full richness of a new anointing by the Father, to fulfil what the psalmist had prophesied: Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows
Today Christ works the first of his signs from heaven by turning water into wine. But water has still to be changed into the sacrament of his blood, so that Christ may offer spiritual drink from the chalice of his body, to fulfil the psalmist’s prophecy: How excellent is my chalice, warming my spirit.
Christian Prayer With Jesus Christ
Lord God,
you chose to be known by us
through the humility of your Son.
Grant us faith to recognise your presence
in the signs you have given,
and humility to receive what you freely offer.
May we follow Christ
from the manger to the waters,
from revelation to sacrament,
and live as those made new by your grace.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen
Glossary Of Christian Terms
Incarnation | The taking of human nature by the Son of God, becoming fully human while remaining fully divine.
Epiphany | The manifestation of Christ to the nations, traditionally associated with the visit of the Magi.
Magi | Wise men from the East whose journey to Christ represents the calling of the Gentiles.
Gentiles | Peoples outside Israel who are brought into God’s saving plan through Christ.
Baptism of the Lord | The event in which Christ was baptised in the Jordan, revealing him as the Son of the Father.
John the Baptist | The prophet who prepared the way for Christ and bore witness to him at the Jordan.
Holy Spirit | The third person of the Trinity, revealed at Christ’s baptism in the form of a dove.
Anointing | The act by which Christ is marked out as God’s chosen one, fulfilled through the Spirit.
Sign | A visible action through which Christ reveals divine truth and points towards salvation.
Sacrament | A visible sign instituted by Christ to give grace, particularly fulfilled in the Eucharist.
On Tuesday, His Grace turns to the theme of Jesus’ hidden years. His Grace asks the students to consider questions concerning what really happened: ‘Who, for instance, was Joseph? Was he indeed a carpenter, or has Joseph’s true role in the society in which he lived been misconstrued and forgotten to us? Though it be a beautiful, simplifying image to grasp, which offers to us much that is of value in Catholic faith… ‘A wise elder, which carpenter could mean, or a great engineer, an architekton, which in the Greek does not mean carpenter. But carpenter in the Hebrew could mean a wise man…’ His Grace turns the pages of his Bible back and forth, as if to itemize the paucity of information. Then he says: ‘What I think I can say to you with confidence is that it is of profound significance that we simply don’t know what Jesus was doing for most of his earthly life. There are some very different possibilities. One idea cherished by the Church is that Jesus worked with his father Joseph as a carpenter. Another possibility is that Jesus lived and prayed and studied closely with John the Baptist. They were cousins, and very close, almost the same, in age. Luke’s Gospel tells us clearly that Jesus and John knew each other from within the womb before they were born. So there may have been something quite important happening there. You see, we don’t know – it is an impossible mystery to us – just how much Jesus had to learn. This is because, if Jesus knew everything, humanly speaking, even as a tiny baby, then how can we say he is fully human? We simply can’t probe too far into this mystery, but we can draw extraordinary truth and healing from this thought, which becomes of immense relevance in our own lives. Jesus came to know and to understand himself not merely as a son of God, but as God the Son, and so as self-identical with his Father. It is not an adoptive relationship. Jesus is God. Now so much is hidden here. But this is a great gift. If you think about it, how do we come to know that we are loved by God, that we have our relationship with God? What are we born with in here’ – his chest – ‘and what do we have to learn? This is to say, what is gifted to us by other Christians at our baptism? ‘Jesus must have studied, and experienced profound revelation about who and what he truly was, and, so it seems to be, these studies cannot have been confined to the Semitic world. But this is the important point: there is a hiddenness about all of this. No matter which schools and which sects our Lord might have encountered all these years, this to us is as a desert space. What this means is that we can enter into the hidden life of Jesus, and there we can discover our own being with God, our own sonship. Our own particular being loved by God can come to us, if we can enter within this great unknown – into this desert space, where we are loved by Jesus. I firmly believe that there may be a great Lenten mystery in this period of our Lord’s life.’ A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 1 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 2 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 3 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 4 | King James Audio Bible | KJV A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 5 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Holy Week | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 6
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