The Great Unveiling

The coming of the Magi from the Orient to a manger in the city of David is the beginning of the definitive end of the uniquely vertical relationship the Israelite people had with God. As if representing the entirety of the Gentile world, the Wise Men open themselves up to the reign of the incarnate, divine King of Judah; thus, the verticality of the Jews is now intersected by the horizontality of the nations- and the locus of this grand meeting is in the heart of a poor baby in swaddling linen.

How was it that the Magi were able to locate and find within the stable in Bethlehem the King of all ages? It will largely remain a mystery in this life, but I think it is reasonable to assume they simply worked with the tools their surrounding culture provided them- the most important one being that ancient guidance the people of the East sought in the study of astronomy. The timing and placement of the stars in the night skies somehow directed these men, with a little help from the prophet Micah (c.f. Mic 5:2), to that little city. Consequently, was it not by means of such an obscure sort of astronomical knowledge which the Magi labored to possess, that God was enabled to draw close to these seekers so that they in turn might draw close to Him? Was it not such an oriental outlook of the heavens that brought the Wise Men west to Heaven Himself?

Therefore, it should be asked by us: How is it that, even in our day-to-day lives, God is searching for any avenue, any inlet, any obscure path to draw us to Himself? He ‘called out’ to the Magi through their astronomy, how then does He show for us a path to Himself? In heaven, what astonishment will we experience when we learn of every way in which God was reaching out to us- even in the most unlikely of circumstances; for the clear and swift calls of grace we experience through inspirations in prayer or the reception of the sacraments by no means exhaust the working of God’s life in us.

How many more of these calls of grace come to us through the mundane activities of the day- or, better yet, even in the unpleasant encounters we might have with others. There are no better illustrations of God using unlikely ways to reach out to us than in the stories of Flannery O'Connor. In her fiction, it is often through no good, lousy, wretched, and miserably obnoxious people that God has an inlet to our world. Hence, maybe we are to consider these sorts of characters in our own lives as cooperating in a mysterious way with bringing about the sovereignty of God within us. Perhaps, in turn, the great imperfection of our own behavior acts as a means for God's kingdom to reach the others in our world. Countless are the ways in which the holy world of the saint conflates with the miserable world of the sinner, and yet, God is in the midst of it all, almost forcing His way through every aperture that fails to separate the divinity of His life from the humanity of our mortality. By every means possible then, God enters our lives through our own failure, so that we can gladly boast with the Apostle Paul in our very weaknesses (c.f. 2 Cor 12:9).

Rightly then has the Epiphany been recognized as a revelation of God to the nations. In this sense it foreshadows that great unveiling that will occur at the Apocalypse when the the curtain will be removed and God will be the proper subject of worship for all creation. But until that time, as the Lord excitedly pursues news subjects for His kingdom, we ought not be surprised by any avenue He might choose to carry forth His great hunt- for He works in mysterious ways.

Just as before a rainstorm the clouds slowly gather and amass to darken the sky, so too is the cloud of God's presence- the Shekhinah- slowly forming. Who knows how much longer the firmament can hold back the downpour? Ignorant as we are of the forecast, we do know one thing: in our own individual deaths, we are to find unique instances in which the torrential reign of Christ will pierce that great void by which we have been so long cut off from the Father.