“THE YOUNG CHILD WITH MARY HIS MOTHER”
Saint Matthew 2: 1-12
The Feast of The Epiphany of our Lord [transferred]: 7 January Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
Herod was evil because he was human, a son of Adam. Herod was unbelieving because his heart followed Adam and not Abraham. If Herod even thought of Scripture it was of Moses and a Pharisaical watering down of said Torah. All evil “wills”, your old natures as well as Herod’s, seek to worship only the self, like Eve, and not the true King. Pagans and sinful natures always plot and plan to destroy the Word of God.
Herod worshipped power and prestige; fine clothes and big houses; and, the ability to make people do what he wanted them to do. This is what your “old Adam” really wants and it’s why you’re so aggravated most of the time.
The Lord is for the miserable and contrite, the blind, deaf, dumb, leprous, and dead. It IS hard for a “rich man” to enter into heaven! Christ had His Prophets record the Truth of His Incarnation and Nativity—“thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda.” The Messiah would be born in the little, humble, “house of bread.” The Messiah would be little, humble, and about the size of a small loaf of bread—pink and wiggling bread.
Herod wanted a diligent search made. But God is not missing or lost. The Lord had Daniel and others share the Messianic prophecies with the Babylonians and then after them with the Chaldeans—the Persians and Medes of Cyrus. The Magi were not first made aware by the external means of the star—an earthly element that the Word was to be attached, but by their study of The Word. They, in fact, “read, marked, and inwardly digested” The Word. The Word the traveling wise men looked at was the Hebrew Scriptures. They didn’t follow the star to Bethlehem they followed the prophets—the same prophets that Herod’s chief priests and scribes looked at. The star only “tipped them off” that something big was now happening; had happened!
Christ drew the Gentiles from the farther East, to His house by the same Holy Ghost Who has called you this evening, and by the same Word of The Lord. God always uses “means” to have His flock gathered to His pasture—that they might be fed. A star, an angel, a pastor, all point to, and distribute, the Word. Jesus is not found but gathers you to His creche of Holy Altar that you might worship Him as God. And in this worship, if it be true, you give Him noting but the faith He has first bestowed upon you, while He gives you Himself in Body and Blood.
The star above the house where the Holy Family was staying was the candle, the lamp, the light of the Trinitarian + invocation, the Holy + Absolution, The Gospel read, the Creed confessed, and the Verba chanted! When the Host is elevated it is not just a star standing over where the young Child was, but it IS that child, that God/Man upon His throne beckoning you to His table. You rejoice with exceeding joy!
“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down, and worshipped Him.” The true Christ will always, and only, be found with His Mother, the one, Holy Catholic, and Apostolic Church. There is no presentation of His gifts, His mercy, His Word of loosing and peace apart from His established means. Pray for all the sectarians that they would be caused to repent and also brought in to the true sheepfold.
The Lord gives His gifts. The true treasures were not brought by the Magi but were given to them and all gentiles. The gold is not your wealth, or even your much needed (for the Church’s maintenance and mission) tithes, but Christ’s wealth: His Body sacrificed and His Blood shed for your forgiveness on the cross. The sweet smelling and Scripture saturating incense is not the granules brought by the Easterners, or used by Christians in salutary tradition, but the prayers of Jesus for all of you which constantly ascend before the Father’s “throne.” And the Myrrh, given by the “kings” to symbolically typify the myrrh which Nicodemus, Joseph, and the “myrrh-bearers” would use to anoint the Lord’s “dead” Body, is in fact the oil of Holy + Baptism, and touch of His hand on your forehead in Absolution.
This day the Magi Gentiles lead you in procession to the House of the Living God, in the flesh, for you.
“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee,
and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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