We have come to adore Him!

WE all remember when we were children how careful we were, a week or so after Christmas, to add to the figures in our crib the three little statues (pasturi) representing the Three Kings or Magi. And that added not only to our Christmas joy, but also to our sense of wonder so characteristic of the season.

The celebration of Christmas never seemed complete without those Three Kings coming from the East. We hardly realised at the time what an important significance the visit of the Magi had in the entire history of salvation. No wonder that the feast of the Epiphany is observed as a holiday of obligation in many parts of the Christian world.

The Magi, often referred to as "Wise Men", were originally a Median priestly tribe of clairvoyants. The term later became general for all kinds of astrologers and sorcerers of all nationalities, often not without some derogatory sense. Their homeland was probably the district just beyond the Jordan and the Dead Sea, a region where both Jews and Arabs, speaking dissimilar dialects, formed mixed populations. The nature of their gifts - gold, incense and myrrh, seems to confirm this.

The appearance of a new and brilliant star in the eastern sky sends the Magi in a westerly direction towards Jerusalem, the Jewish capital. Evidently they were aware of the pitch of Messianic expectation among their Jewish neighbours. The rest of the story we all know, thanks to Matthew, the only one of the four Evangelists to give us this account.

The story of the Three Kings, notwithstanding its historically obscure details, manifests God's multifarious ways of revealing Himself to humanity in general and to each one of us in particular. Primitive creatures saw God in nature, in the wind, in the sun and lighting. The Ancient Greeks and Romans found God in dreams and oracles. Eastern cultures discovered God in countless manifestations corresponding to the energies contained in the human psyche.

But the Jews were monotheists and saw God in the remarkable events of their history over the centuries. Christianity has now become the unique religion it is because of its claims that God is manifested concretely in the human personality of Jesus Christ.

When the story of the Magi is located in the foregoing historical context, then we can understand why we find it so carefully described in Matthew's Gospel, and also why it has always occupied an important place in the Church's liturgical calendar.

The feast of the Epiphany takes note of this important lesson about God's desire to manifest Himself to us in different ways: through the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity by which He became not only one for us, but one of us, through the teachings of the Church He instituted as a means of salvation for us and for every human being; through His voice in the privacy of our formed conscience; and finally through all that happens to us and around us when we are properly tuned up to listen to him.

The Magi, about whom we have heard so much lately in the context of the World Youth Day celebrated in the German city of Cologne, where their relics are traditionally held to be preserved in its marvellous Cathedral, have a message for each one of us. We too as Christians are invited today to be 'Magi' in the midst of a society which has lost, or is gradually losing, its way to Jesus Christ. Our shining Christian witness should also be the shining star in today's society which, as we too often see, is increasingly losing its way to Jesus Christ.