Epiphany Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

Jan 6th, 2024

January 7th 2024

I have just watched the annual Epiphany Mass in Köln Cathedral, a place where art, legend, and faith combine both in the vastness of this great Gothic space and around the shrine of the Magi beyond the old High Altar.

We might scoff at the stories of how these relics came to be there, maybe some will smile at the suggestion that the provenance of the bones and the historical date of the remains within that golden shrine are those of the biblical figures.

Part of me says that this does not matter, for my faith in saints does not always depend upon dates, and since humans are very capable of embellishing stories over time, the legends (by that I mean tales) of our saints often have a creative story-telling element built upon a truth.

To my mind it does not really matter if the Magi's bones are there, the point is, that in this place for many centuries, a living pilgrimage has taken place; a journey of personal seeking in faith, caught up in the gospel tale of those Magi- here seeking not the star of Bethlehem, but through the wonder of the `Magi's story- the living star that is the eternal Christ.

This is the way sacred places work in our spiritual landscape, they become holy by our associations with them, doors of perception into the world of the Kingdom of God where our time and God's time collide in our celebration and prayer. As in all our Liturgical celebrations, we remember not simply the past, but a sacred event that where the past becomes NOW. I would love to go on a pilgrimage to Koln, to connect with those mysterious Magi, just to offer the Christ my own gifts of rather tarnished gold, burnt out incense, and the myrrh that needs to anoint my own sense of mortality. I suspect that as I grow older the veil between faith and delight in the wonder of these gospel stories gets thinner, I become personally touched by the truthful reality that they hold together a bittersweet experience of life leading me ever onwards, guided by that celestial star, that is Christ our Lord.

But I was struck by a deeper current of thought, how at the end of mass children dressed in various robes, some holding a golden star on a pole, came and stood next to the archbishop to offer their prayers and wishes on behalf of the huge congregation in honour of the Magi, but picking up several key threads, such as following the star that is Christ, offering our own gifts to a world in need, and in a poignant set of prayers for Palestinian children and others reminding us all of deadly ending of the gospel tale with the massacre of the `Innocents by rapacious, powerful and greedy people and turning our thoughts and actions to the children of the world caught up in the darkness of suffering.

And yet, this feast is also one of light, found in the star that the Magi followed, which is now for us Christ, the light that has come into the world. It is also a feast of enlightenment, opening up our closed minds to the truth of Christ's coming lived out in our Christian faith, that openness to others as the second reading today puts it: 'When you read this you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to human beings in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit, that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and co-partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.(Ep 3:4-6) ) There are many things in the Church and our world we do not like, our personal prejudices are rooted deep and take time to change, but change we must. The temptation to exclude those we are frightened of, or fear, or simply consider a nuisance is strong. In the Church we judge far too often, and exclude many. None of us, if the secrets of our hearts be known, are really any better than anybody else, and e ought to be truly thankful Christ did not come to exclude but to include, not to create an exclusive cult, but to open wide the inclusive doors of the Kingdom. 'All are welcome', and that little truth came home to me, watching the children in Köln cathedral, processing to the shrine of the magi-priest-kings, the seekers after God, who found the Word made Flesh, the Light that has overcome the darkness. Let us go with them!

Happy Epiphany!

Lectio

Extract

English version of the ancient Syriac Text Revelation of the Magi

(Christ speaking…)And I am everywhere, because I am a ray of light whose light has shone in this world from the majesty of my Father, who has sent me to fulfill everything that was spoken about me in the entire world and in every land by unspeakable mysteries, and to accomplish the commandment of my glorious Father, who by the prophets preached about me to the contentious house, in the same way as for you, as befits your faith, it was revealed to you about me. (13:10)

T S Eliot

The Journey of the Magi (1927)

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.