How many of you like mysteries? I confess I enjoy a good mystery, either a book or a TV program. I’ve raised this question about mysteries because that’s the focus of my reflection today. Although I, also, must admit the mystery I have in mind is not a “who done it.” I’ve heard someplace there are probably only a half-dozen or so basic mystery plots. All of the thousands of stories we read are variations on a limited number of themes. Well, the kind of mystery I have in mind for this homily comes with only two themes. There are only two, basic mysteries in life: the Mystery of the Incarnation and the Pascal Mystery, the mystery of the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord. The mystery for today is, of course, the Mystery of the Incarnation.
But first of all, some of you may be wondering why the Incarnation is called a “mystery?” It certainly doesn’t seem to be like anything Agatha Christie would write. As you know, there are other kinds of mysteries besides the Mystery of the Incarnation or the Pascal Mystery which are not “who done its”.
How many of you recall the fifteen “mysteries” of the rosary?1 I could go into a long catechetical lesson on the relation of our word “mystery” and the Greek word mysterium or the Latin equivalent sacramentum and how these are related to the English words “sacrament” and “sign.” However, I’d like to take a different direction, today. Instead, I want us to see how our usual meaning for “mystery” can also give us an appreciation for the Mystery of the Incarnation.
In a good mystery story, we look forward to the end. We want to know what the conclusion is. We’re very puzzled along the way, looking for clues as to what the story is all about, but we enjoy our puzzlement. This is where all the fun is, trying to outguess the author. A good author gives us all the clues. A good mystery writer doesn’t throw you any last minute curves on the final page. You follow the writer all the way, even if you don’t understand all of the clues at the time. Later, at the conclusion, it all becomes clear. And along the way, you need to trust the author. You need to trust he, or she, won’t fool you unfairly. If you get fooled at all, it’s your own fault, not being bright enough to see where the author was leading you.
In this description of a good mystery story, maybe you can see everything I said is also true about either the Mystery of the Incarnation or the Pascal Mystery. No matter how hard we try to understand it, we really need to wait until the author reveals everything to us at the conclusion. In the meantime, we need to trust the author and know he will not fool us. We need to keep looking for the clues and enjoy the story as it develops.
For the past ten days we’ve been enjoying and celebrating one of the best mystery stories, the Mystery of the Incarnation, which begins on Christmas Eve, when we remember how, some two-thousand years ago, our God became incarnated. The mystery begins with how our God took on the flesh of a human being.
But what do we mean by this Incarnation? We are told that, in some way our God, the power of the universe, took on human flesh. God, this Being who is greater than anything we can imagine, became a helpless human baby. And yet, at the same time, this Infant was not only truly and completely human but was also truly and completely divine. In our own modern, human way, each of us asks how can this really have happened? How could the power which is God be captured within a human baby? How could this baby be both human and divine at the same time?
We have no human answer to this. This, of course, is why we call it a “mystery,” one we need to accept and to trust that God will reveal to us what it all means. Some people refuse to have this trust. They say it’s not possible for Jesus to be both completely human and completely divine at the same time. Yet, many of these same people are willing to look at nature and not question the fact that, in some way, the hard, physical matter we observe consists of atoms, and these atoms are really electrical charges. They believe this hard ambo is really a collection of energy.
At the same time, I’d be hard-pressed to truly understand how energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. I, also, confess I really don’t understand how a photon of light can, at the same time, be both a particle and a wave. Yet, I accept both Einstein’s equation and the quantum theory. So, for me personally, I have no problem accepting that the baby born two-thousand years ago was both human and divine. The real question for me is: not how, but why?
Again, there are many theological explanations I might give. But instead, I’d like to offer a little story I read a long time ago. It’s about a farmer. He was a very kind and considerate man. He was also an agnostic. Not an atheist. He believed in some kind of power, but wasn’t at all sure about this person called Christ. Now, this farmer was married to a Roman Catholic, one who had no problem about accepting Jesus as the Son of God. It happened one cold Christmas Eve, when his wife had gone off to Midnight Mass as she did every year. The farmer, once again, stayed at home. But this year, since it was so cold, the farmer went out to the barn to check on his cows.
As he was leaving the warm barn to return to the house, he noticed a small flock of sparrows hopping about on the frozen snow looking for seeds that weren’t there. The farmer, being a compassionate man and knowing there was grain in the warm barn, tried to shoo the sparrows towards the open barndoor. But every time he tried to head them in that direction they would flutter off and land in the snow even farther from the safety of the barn. He tired every way he could think of to entice them into the barn. Nothing worked.
He, himself, kept getting colder and colder. The wind had come up stronger and he knew the birds would freeze to death unless he did something. Finally, in desperation, the farmer cried out: “If only through some miracle I could become a sparrow, then they would not be afraid of me. Then they might follow me and I could lead them into the warmth and safety of my barn.” It was then, at that moment, the farmer fell to his knees on the frozen snow and sobbed, “My God, I now know what you did for us.”
During this season we have been celebrating this beginning of the mystery of what our God has done for us. It’s, also, good for us to ponder for a moment what we might do for him. The Gospel reading for today gives us something to think about, an action or state of mind we seldom stop to reflect upon.
Today’s Gospel speaks of “homage.” Our reading quotes the astrologers from the East as telling Herod, “We observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage.” And Herod responds, “When you have discovered something, report your findings to me so that I may go and offer him homage too.” And at the conclusion, the reading says: “They prostrated themselves and did him homage.” So what do we mean by this “homage”?
Homage is an ancient custom. As you can tell from the reading, it goes back to Biblical days. The practice was a major event during the Middle Ages. A knight, for example, made homage only to a royal lord who would offer him protection in return for the service provided by the knight. The knight would lie prostrate on the ground as a sign of his total submission to the king or nobleman. Often, as part of the ritual, the knight or the person offering the homage, would place his hands between the hands of the king to indicate he was offering his own hands to the king and the king’s hands would protect him. So, homage was a two-way arrangement. The one party would say, “I am completely yours,” and the other would say, “I will protect you always.”
With that in mind, can you imagine the power of today’s Gospel reading? Here you have astrologers, wise men or kings from the center of eastern power, falling prostrate in front of an infant, a Jewish infant at that, and asking him for his protection in return for the service they would provide him. These Magi had been willing to journey from their own homeland to pay homage to this child. They weren’t aftraid to disobey a direct order from king Herod in order to protect this child. This homage is part of the mystery of the Incarnation. Here we see a baby who is born as a king at his birth, one who does not become a king because of what he has done, because of the battles he has won. A mere baby, to whom wise kings pay homage, offering themselves to this baby and seeking protection from him.
This Gospel of Matthew begins with the homage paid by the Magi to the Christ Child. The Gospel ends with this anointed one mounting the throne of his cross over which hangs the sign: “Here is the King of the Jews.” Between the Mystery of the Incarnation and the Mystery of the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord, we encounter the mystery of his life. He was a King but he did not ask for the homage of the Magi, nor the gifts they brought him. In his whole life he gave only one command: love one another as I have loved you. In return, he has given us a gift, the peace of the Lord. It is up to each one of us to decide what form our homage should take, what service we are to offer our Lord in return for his protection.
We have no idea what the Magi did when they left Bethlehem to return to their own country. Yet, we would expect that, in some way, they had been changed by their encounter with the Christ Child. As we leave the season of Christmas and our own encounter with the Christ Child, it’s up to each one of us to determine how we have been changed by our encounter. Today, we pay him homage. Together we are all part of his mystery. As we await its final chapter, let us trust in the author of all life, and like the farmer, know why our God became flesh and dwelt among us.
Feast of the Epiphany; January 4, 1987
Is: 60: 1-6; Eph 3:2-3, 5-6; Mt 2: 1-12
- As of 2004, there are twenty “mysteries of the rosary,” since Pope John Paul II has added the Five Illustrative Mysteries