Seeking Him

Fr Richard Healey delves into the biblical account of the Magi visiting Jesus after his birth. The sermon delves into the journey’s significance, the various individuals involved, and the moral teachings that can be gleaned from the narrative. The speaker aims to impart spiritual insights and lessons from the Magi’s experience to the audience.

(00:00:00) – Some wise men came from the east. These Magi, these Magoi. These magicians, astronomers, astrologers. It’s kind of tricky to find the best word to translate this reality. As our first reading suggests, these wise men, these Magi from the East could have been from the Medes or the Persians. They certainly had people like this, people who were well skilled at discerning the signs that they were able to see when they looked up into the night sky. And so these magi make their way to visit the newborn king. Well, he may not be exactly newborn. Matthew leaves those details open. As we see later, Herod decides that it’s prudent to kill any male under the under two years of age. So Jesus could have been up to two years of age at this point in his history. So not necessarily newborn. And the fact that we kind of lump the three wise men, the Magi appearing there on the edge of the nativity scene is a weird kind of mixing together of two very different stories, the Gospel of Luke that is written to a Gentile audience.

(00:01:32) – And so his first appearance that Jesus makes is to shepherds and to the commoners people that were outsiders, the smelly kinds of people that you didn’t want to associate with, whereas Matthew has them being in the house. So the Magi come to the house where Joseph and Mary have made their home. And so it’s just to their house that they come. There’s no need for the sudden finding of a place to stay, because they were already living there in a house in Bethlehem, because that’s where their family comes from, and that’s their origins. And it’s only later that in Matthew’s gospel, they make their way up to Nazareth, so that Jesus will be called a Nazarene. But these two stories of the birth of Jesus provide us insights into what is important, what is key. As we ponder, where do we fit in this story? We have three different sets of characters today. In Matthew’s Gospel, we have the Magi. We also have King Herod, who is such a strange and kind of weaselly sort of character.

(00:02:48) – He’s so anxious, so filled with dread, that someone is trying to take over his throne. And so history records that he killed so many people because he was afraid that someone else would try and take his position. Even his wife, even his children, weren’t immune to the protection that a father, a king, should have offered. So King Herod is there. He’s kind of interested, but he’s surely interested only in his political expediency. So he’s asking these questions simply because he has that desire to take and to hold on to his power in whatever way that is necessary for him. So he becomes like this negative example or sign of one way of being in relationship to Jesus. And then we have the leaders in Jerusalem. And so they’ve read the scriptures. They know where the child is to be born. They’ve pondered, they’ve studied these things, but the head knowledge has been left there. It hasn’t changed them. It hasn’t transformed them. They’re not desiring to go and lay and offer possible homage to the king.

(00:04:05) – And so they become those examples of people who are indifferent, people who know better, who’ve had the knowledge, who’ve had the Catholic education, who’ve been experienced and skilled in these things. But that faith hasn’t actually been taken on board as a personal encounter with the living God. It’s just left in the way of knowledge, and knowledge is never going to save us. It’s only when, like the Magi, that they’re changed and they’re transformed by their knowledge to get up and to make that journey, to make that pilgrimage to, to see with their own eyes what they can behold. And when they get to the scene in Bethlehem, there’s nothing extraordinary that they would have met there. And yet they saw with the eyes of faith. Now that something was different about this child, he was the fulfilment. Of their dreams, their hopes, their desires, their longing, their education had pointed to them in the right direction. But now they were following through, and now they were laying themselves first in, kneeling, in laying their homage, laying their worship before the Lord.

(00:05:15) – It’s the only way that we can offer ourselves to God. We have to bow down. We have to kneel down in reverence before our God. It’s a wonderful thing that in Bethlehem, when you go there, that Bethlehem, that the church that the Emperor Constantine will probably mainly through the example of his mother, who was much more devout, Constantine was probably a bit more like King Herod, more politically expedient than actually a person of great faith. But he built this church over the site of the probable location of the house of the birth of Jesus. And the entranceway into that church is not a normal height door. It’s only a half height door. And so someone of my statue has to kind of get right down to, to get through the door. But it’s a good reminder that the way to enter, to encounter Jesus does require a certain humility, that we don’t get there by our education. We don’t get there by learning, by answering correctly a series of propositions, by being able to study the catechism and to know all of the truths that are contained in there.

(00:06:31) – It’s by the way of love. And so the Magi passed that test first by surrendering themselves and laying down their lives by offering that worship. But they also bring the very best of what they can offer. And so we told that open their treasures, and from there drew out these gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They offer the very best, not necessarily very practical gifts, but the best of who they are. And they’re all they represent. They offer that to God, and it’s a sign for us of what we can do over the course of this new year 2024 involves. And as it continues to offer the possibilities and the challenges, and no doubt there will be a whole mix of good and bad. In whatever moment we find ourselves, God is inviting us to that place of surrender, my place of offering our worship to God and then offering the very best of what we can bring so that God can change that and transform that. We will be changed when we encounter God, when we find that love, when we experience that love for ourselves.

(00:07:45) – Our lives can never be the same. Once we encounter him, once we know that we are loved by him, then, like the Magi, they have to return back to their own country by a different way. Because when we are changed, when we meet and are loved by God, we will be different and we won’t be able to go back to our old way of life. So as we pray today, let’s pray that we will have that gift to be able to kneel down, to bow down in worship, that we can bring the best of who we are to offer to God, and that God in his love and his mercy will change us and transform us to be the people that he wants us to be over the course of this new year.

Play MP3