Sunday, January 6, 2002
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Sunday, January 6, 2002 |
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Journey of the Magi our own journey By KEVIN PEEK Christmas cards are so common a ritual of the season that often they fail to truly express any more sentiment than the fact that we have once again acknowledged each other's friendship, kinship, or other relationship. Oh, there are the few inner-circle people for whom we spend the time and mental energy to convey a deeper, more personal, even intimate recognition; but to use this means of communication to air a private reflection on the nature of Christmas day and its application in our lives is truly a rare occurrence indeed. Perhaps the most profound Christmas card ever sent was that penned by the famed poet T. S. Eliot to all of his friends one winter day. In it he included a poem he had just completed called "Journey of the Magi." It records the reminiscent musings of one of the wise men who journeyed from afar to witness the birth of Christ marked by a star. The journey was exhausting and abusive, but culminated with the birth of a child in a place called simply "satisfactory." He has returned from this difficult journey to his former life of "summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet", but is "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods." It is this angst, driven by the uniqueness of the birth he had witnessed, which causes the magi to ask, "were we led all that way for Birth of 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." To confuse birth with death; how is this to be? Eliot had not created a drunken hallucination in the mind of his magi; rather, he had discovered the transforming power of the mystery of the Incarnation. For it is in the birth of the Christ-child that man discovers the truth about himself: the Creator and Designer of the human race has taken on the fullness of humanity and reveals the perfection for which He created us. It is face-to-face with that reality that a man must measure himself. St. Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 4:3ff that "It is God's will that you should be holy; that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God." To this end then, he tells us in Colossians 3:5ff "Put to death, therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatryYou used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." This then is the reality encountered by Eliot's magi, the real journey that has only just begun. From the moment he approached the manger, and recognized inside the King of kings and Lord of lords, he was faced with a choice: lay down your life, take up your cross, surrender all and follow me, reign with me or resign yourself to living a frustrating existence in a world of fleeting pleasure and false allurement, with little meaning and no purpose. And so, in a very real way, the birth of Christ, for all who believe or claim to believe, is in fact a death knell for a former way of life. We who have received and understood the truth of God's assumption of human nature, and the joy of recreation in the perfection of His grace cannot go back to the ways we once were, and must not; for it is "because of these, the wrath of God is coming." (Col. 3:6) Not only must we turn and cast off, or put to death, these former acts, but their very discussion or depiction needs fill us with vile repugnance. Lest we return as a dog to its vomit, we are told by Paul in Philippians 4 that "all our thoughts ought to be concerned with whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable if anything is excellent or praiseworthy think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me put it into practice." Therefore, the Christian, fully cognizant of the gift of Jesus Christ, does not carry on like he once did and like the world often times continues to do so around him. In a post-baptismal existence, we stand apart from conversations and avoid shows and movies that diminish the soul's intimate union with God. And should we, even then, lose sight of the goal, as many of us did before the tragedies of September, once having been reawakened, we are to refuse to return to life "as normal, as usual", and rather slave to make more aware of the need to change. But this requires discipline, and discipline requires grace, and they both require a death to sin in the human condition. All of this lead Eliot to recognize the truth: that man, once confronted with the mystery of God made flesh cannot return to his life with leisure and ease, but will "no longer (be) at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods." Rather, longing for our homeland, where every tear shall be wiped away and death shall rule no more, we too conclude with the magi, "I should be glad of another death" the death that ushers in everlasting life. Father Kevin Peek is the parochial vicar at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Peachtree City.
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