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.
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
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