Sermon 200

SERMO 200

On the Epiphany of the Lord

The Epiphany is the manifestation of Christ.

The Magi from the East came to worship the birth of the Virgin. Today, we celebrate this day and offer the owed solemnity and discourse to it. This day first dawned on them, it returns to us with annual festivity. They were the first fruits of the Gentiles, we are the people of the Gentiles. To us, the Apostles announced this by word, to them a star as if the language of the heavens: and to us, the same Apostles, as if the heavens, declared the glory of God. For why should we not recognize them as the heavens, who have become the seat of God? As it is written: "The soul of the just is the seat of wisdom." For through these heavens, He, the creator and inhabitant of the heavens, thundered, whereupon the world trembled with thunder, and behold, now it believes. A great sacrament. He then lay in a manger, and led the Magi from the East. He was hidden in the stable and recognized in the heaven; so that being recognized in heaven He might be manifested in the stable, and this day might be called "Epiphany," which in Latin can be said to mean manifestation: at once commending both His grandeur and humility, so that He who was shown in the open heaven by signs in the stars, was sought and found in a narrow lodging; weak in infant limbs, wrapped in infant swaddling clothes, worshipped by the Magi, feared by the wicked.

Herod's terror.

For King Herod feared him, because the same Magi, while still seeking the child whom they had known to be born under witness of the sky, relayed the news to him. What will be the tribunal of the judge, when the cradles of an infant terrified proud kings? Now, kings more prudently do not seek to kill as Herod did; but rather, like the Magi, find delight in adoring him, especially as the one who endured even the death the enemy desired to inflict, for the sake of his enemies, and in his body, being killed, he killed death. Let kings now piously fear him, who sits already at the right hand of the Father, whom that impious king feared while he was still sucking at his mother’s breasts. Let them hear what is written: And now, kings, understand; be instructed, you who judge the earth: Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. For that king, the avenger of impious kings, and the ruler of the pious, was not born as kings are born in this world; because he was born, whose kingdom is not of this world. There was nobility in the birth of the virgin who gave birth; and nobility in the divinity of the one born. Indeed, while so many kings of the Jews were already born and deceased, never did the Magi seek to adore any of them: because they never learned of any of them under the speaking sky.

The unbelief of the Jews.

Nevertheless, what should not be passed over, this enlightenment of the Magi stood as a great testimony to the blindness of the Jews. In their land, these men sought whom those in their own land did not recognize. Among them, these men found the infant whom those in their land denied while he was teaching. In their lands, these distant strangers adored the Christ child not yet speaking words, where those citizens crucified him as a young man performing miracles. These men recognized God in small limbs; those men did not spare him even in great deeds, as if it were more to see a new star shining at his birth than the sun mourning at his death. Indeed, that same star which led the Magi to the place where the infant God was with his virgin mother, which certainly could have led them to the very city itself, however hid itself and did not appear to them at all until they questioned those same Jews about the city in which Christ was to be born, so that they would name it according to the testimony of divine Scripture, and they said: In Bethlehem of Judea. For so it is written: And you, Bethlehem, land of Judea, you are not the least among the rulers of Judah: for out of you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. What else did divine providence signify here, except that the divine Scriptures would remain with the Jews alone, by which the Gentiles would be instructed, and they would be blinded; which they carried not for the assistance of their own salvation, but for the testimony of our salvation? For today, when we present the prophecies about Christ already accomplished and illuminated by the light of fulfilled events, if perhaps the pagans whom we wish to win over were to say that they were not so much predicted before, but after the events, so that those things that happened were thought to be prophesied, we recite the books of the Jews, to remove the doubt of the pagans: who were already figured in those Magi, whom the Jews instructed about the city in which Christ was born with divine words, and they themselves neither sought him nor recognized him.

Christ has united the Jews and the Gentiles to Himself.

Now therefore, beloved, sons and heirs of grace, see your calling and adhere with the most persevering love to Christ, manifested to Jews and Gentiles as the cornerstone. For he was manifested in the very cradles of his infancy to those who were near and to those who were far; to the Jews in the nearness of the shepherds, to the Gentiles in the distance of the Magi. The former believe that on the day he was born, the latter believe they came to him today. He was therefore manifested, neither to the learned nor to the righteous. For ignorance prevails in the rusticity of the shepherds, and impiety in the sacrileges of the Magi. That cornerstone has drawn both to itself: for he came to choose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and not to call the righteous, but sinners; so that no great person should be proud, and no lowly person should despair. Hence the Scribes and Pharisees, seeing themselves as too learned and too righteous, showed the city of his birth by reciting prophetic writings, but they rejected him, the builders. But because he was made the head of the corner, and what he showed at birth, he fulfilled through suffering; to this we adhere, together with the other wall having the remnants of Israel, which have been saved through the election of grace. For those shepherds prefigured them to be joined nearby, so that we also, whose calling from afar the coming of the Magi signified, no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of God, remain built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, with Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone: who made both one, that in one we might love unity, and to gather the branches which were also grafted from the wild olive tree, who through pride have been broken and have become heretics, because God is able again to graft them in, let us have tireless charity.