The Epiphany of the Lord, by Gayle Somers

In this Sunday’s Gospel, magi “from the east” ask, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?”  Just by asking this question, they herald the New Light that has dawned on all men.

Gospel (Read Mt 2:1-12)

St. Matthew tells us that after Jesus’ birth an event loaded with significance for the whole world took place.  “Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem,” looking for a king who had been recently born, the “king of the Jews.”  Who were these men, and why did they ask this question?

The “magi” were likely astrologers, considered at that time to be “wise men” because of their lifelong commitment to studying the skies and finding meaning in the cosmos.  They probably came from Persia, and they were possibly part of a school of wise men over which the Jewish prophet Daniel had been given authority hundreds of years earlier.  Daniel, as a young man, had been carried off by the Babylonians into exile, along with all the other Jews.  This was the punishment God meted out to Judah for her covenant infidelity in the sixth century B.C.  In that strange, pagan land, Daniel resolutely kept the faith of Israel, trusting in God as his only king and refusing to participate in the rampant idolatry.  God called Daniel to be His prophet there, and He also gave him an extraordinary gift of interpreting dreams and visions.  Daniel interpreted one of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams that no one else in the realm could understand.  In gratitude, the king made Daniel “chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon” (read Dan 2:48).  If this school of wise men endured through the centuries (Daniel never returned to Judah), it was still in existence at the time of our story, although Babylon had long ago been conquered by the Persians.  The school would likely have preserved a certain Jewish prophecy that would have been well-known to Daniel and of great interest to astrologers.  Why? …

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