Scripture Readings for the week of January 8, 2012

Feast of the Epiphany

Isaiah 60:1-6             Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-13             Ephesians 3:2-3            Matthew 2:1-12

There is interesting imagery in this first reading.  One the one hand, the prophet Isaiah is trying to bolster the spirits of the Israelites as they begin to return home from exile in Babylon only to find Jerusalem in tatters.  The prophet tells them to look to better times: "Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem!  Your Light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you."  Then in a mingling of the then present and the future, Isaiah says that Jerusalem will become home to outsiders and, by extension, he looks forward to the coming of the Magi and the opening of the Church to the Gentiles: "Nations shall walk by your light and kings by your shining radiance . . . They all gather and come to you..."  Isaiah foresees the restoration of the holy city: "Then you shall be radiant at what you see . . . the wealth of the nations shall be brought to you."  He concludes with a Messianic prophecy: "Caravans of camels shall fill you . . . all from Sheba shall come bearing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming the praises of the Lord."

Hundreds of years before the coming of the Messiah, this psalm offers and unerring look ahead to the events portrayed in the New Testament, especially by Matthew (2:1-12).  In it we hear the psalmist, in this instance possibly Solomon, describing the effects of the appearance of the Messiah on the earth and society: "Justice shall flower in His days, and profound peace, till the moon be no more."  Then he speaks of the coming of the Magi: "All kings shall pay Him homage . . . " and looks ahead to the good the Messiah will do: "For He shall rescue the poor when he cries out and the afflicted when he has no one to help him."

In this short excerpt from his letter to the Ephesians, Paul explodes the belief of the Jewish converts to Christianity that they were the sole heirs of God's kingdom: "The Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body [of Christ] and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel" - quite a bold statement at the time.

Matthew's Gospel is the only one of the four that chronicles the appearance of the Magi, beginning with their arrival in Jerusalem at the throne of King Herod, to their visit to Bethlehem to pay homage to the Christ Child, to their subsequent return to their homeland avoiding another meeting with Herod at the prompting of an angel.  It is here that we learn of the three gifts of the Magi, each symbolic of the Messiah: Gold because He is a king; Frankincense because He is God and Myrrh because He will give up His life to save us.  The broader message, of course, obvious to Matthew's Jewish readers, and announced by St. Paul in today's second reading, is that the Messiah brings salvation to the world, not just the Jews, symbolized by the "foreign", non-Jewish Magi.