The celestial event of 2017, and maybe of our adult lives, was the total eclipse of the sun that occurred in parts of the US this past August 21st. We all learned new terms like "Path of Totality", the narrow band of US geography across which the eclipse would be truly full. I live near Chicago, which was not on the Path of Totality but close enough that it got significantly darker outside for a few minutes. I'm usually not much of an astronomy maven, but I have to admit that the whole thing was pretty cool.
It seems that the free market didn't entirely rise to the occasion: there was a shortage of viewer sun-glasses that were certified as safe to view the eclipse, and there were also fraudulent sun-glasses being sold that didn't actually provide the necessary protection. So, not finding the marketplace trustworthy, and not having planned ahead, but wishing to view the eclipse, I did an at-home science project instead. Well, "did" in the sense that I had one of my kids do most of the work. An hour before the eclipse was about to start, I took a box of breakfast cereal out of the pantry, pulled out the liner bag filled with cereal and set it aside, and asked my kid to follow these instructions to make a pinhole viewer. She did, and it worked great. If you watch the video I've linked to, it explains it much better than I can, but the gist of it is: you prick a pinhole at one end of the box, and that tiny hole becomes a projector that enables us to enjoy the wonder of the music of the spheres. That little pinhole enabled me to watch the eclipse proceed for a few minutes. Then, as darkness covered the earth, I had to do a conference call for work or something equally banal.
Jesus is the light that comes into our lives. "Rise up in splendor, your light has come!", exhorts the prophet Isaiah. But it seems that we don't get exposed to the full radiance right away, and not everyone sees it at the same time. "See, darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds the people", Isaiah explains. Among the mysteries of our faith is the mystery of revelation: God, for reasons that aren't completely clear to us, has chosen not to reveal everything to everyone right away. He chose one particular people, the twelve tribes of Israel, to be his own people, and revealed himself to them through his mighty deeds, his law and his prophets over long centuries of human history. The Law and the Prophets became the sun and moon to guide them - still are lights to provide guidance today.
Today's feast of the Epiphany celebrates that God is now extending his revelation to the entire world - we're all invited to be his people now. But the astrologers from the East, as wise and learned and generous as they seem to be, presumably weren't immersed in the traditions of the Law and the Prophets. They didn't have a foundation in revelation that helped them understand this new revelation - the revelation of God's son Jesus. The magi were from a people wrapped in darkness and shadow. They didn't see by the full radiance of the sun right away - they had to seek it out. The light that dawned on them was a single star. Now, a star is a blazing ball of fire; but to them, wrapped in darkness and far off from the blaze, it appeared as a single pinhole of light.
Yet, when you are wrapped in darkness, even a pinhole of light piercing the gloom of your life is a notable event. It seems to portend great things. That pinhole of light becomes a ray of hope. And so when this single star, this pinhole of light, dawned upon the wise men, they followed it.
And so should we. We have a tendency to cloak ourselves in darkness and sin. The light of Christ, which is a radiant sun for the angels and saints, may appear to our shadow-enveloped eyes as a single pinhole of light. We may not be ready yet for the full warmth and brightness. Christ may come to us, not all at once, but at first as a gentle caress, a soft whisper, a single pinhole of light. But if we turn toward the star and follow where it leads us, we'll soon be wrapped in warmth and flooded with light.
The day of the eclipse was one in which the country, momentarily at least, stopped thinking about rancorous politics and our other problems, and focused on something outside ourselves, part of our amazing universe. Too bad it was back to business as usual the next day.
ReplyDelete"We have a tendency to cloak ourselves in darkness and sin." There's a point to ponder.
ReplyDeleteNot sure that I wholeheartedly agree that human nature tends toward evil. I think most people make an effort to be decent, but put on blinders: we don't see the sick, the suffering, the downhearted, or the frail. We don't see how our bad habits affect others (or we don't care). Or we see things so clearly that we become depressed and wonder what's the use.
But I do take your point that experiencing the light and trying to move toward it is transformative. I like the idea of the Wise Men following the star without any real idea of what they would find. But when they saw that poor baby in a stable, they knew that was their answer.
Also, a kitchen colander with round holes makes for a purdy good eclipse viewer.
And yet the entrance antiphon for Dec. 30 (Wisdom18; 14-15) is:
ReplyDelete"When a profound silence covered all things
and night was in the middle of its course
Your all-powerful word, O Lord,
bounded from the royal throne."
Which, to me, calls us lightning and a stroke of thunder in the middle of darkness and quiet. Except that's not what it says, although the "bounded" makes it sound unlike a thief in the night. Anyway I love rolling that antiphon around in my mouth.
Your initial image, of the eclipse, was a painful reminder of yet another sky event that was, like all sky events in Florida during our tenure, a dud. I watched shadows on the back fence, but instead of darkness we got scattered clouds.
Reading between the lines of the notes to Matthew 2:1-12 in the NAB, it seems to me that they imply he story of the Magi is not historical. It is not necessary to read between the lines in Raymond E. Brown's The Birth of the Messiah. He comes down quite emphatically against historicity: "[T]hose who wish to maintain the historicity of the Matthean Magi story are faced with nigh insuperable obstacles." The story for Brown is a reflection on the Old Testament.
ReplyDeleteDoes it make a difference whether the Magi are historical figures or not?
Unless someone can prove to me definitively that the story of the Magi didn't happen, I am inclined to believe that it probably did. To me the infancy narratives are different than, for instance, the flood in Genesis. We are dealing with something that was recorded, if not in the lifetime of living witnesses, at least in the lifetimes of those who heard the story from them. Those who have done any work with family histories are familiar with stories that seem to contradict each other. One branch of the family may have heard events told differently than another branch. Doesn't mean anyone is lying or making up things. Just that memories were told a little differently, or different things were important to different family members. I remember events in my childhood different than my siblings, all of whom are younger than me. Though it shouldn't matter to faith whether everything in the infancy narratives happened exactly as recorded, I think Biblical scholars, including the esteemed Raymond Brown, are on shaky ground when they reconstruct things 2 millennia after the fact, and make the assumption that people who would have had access to actual witnesses spun a fanciful tale for effect or to prove a point.
DeleteThere are a lot of problems with the Magi story, beginning with: Who were they? When did it happen, on 12/26/1 or months or years later? What became of the gifts? And how come nobody in Nazareth remembered 30 years later? Lack of answers takes away nothing from what the stories tell us, starting that if you look for answers from the brightest and best -- or, as they say in the island, people of wealth and quality -- you would have done better to follow a star.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem that it had to happen in the first two years of Jesus' life, since only the kids two and under were on Herod's hit list. As for the gifts, I always heard they got pawned for living expenses while they were in Egypt. Maybe no one wanted to hire a carpenter without a green card.
DeleteHere are two interesting notes from the NAB regarding Matthew's account of the Magi:
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[2:1] In the days of King Herod: Herod reigned from 37 to 4 B.C. Magi: originally a designation of the Persian priestly caste, the word became used of those who were regarded as having more than human knowledge. Matthew’s magi are astrologers.
* [2:2] We saw his star: it was a common ancient belief that a new star appeared at the time of a ruler’s birth. Matthew also draws upon the Old Testament story of Balaam, who had prophesied that “A star shall advance from Jacob” (Nm 24:17), though there the star means not an astral phenomenon but the king himself.
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Raymond E. Brown raises major objections to historicity, which I won't attempt to transcribe or summarize here. But I have some minor objections of my own. First of all, the Magi were astrologers. Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about astrology:
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2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.
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So the Magi in Matthew were astrologers, and yet the Catholic Church unequivocally condemns the practice of astrology. Also, the NAB notes (see above) that "it was a common ancient belief that a new star appeared at the time of a ruler’s birth." This is a belief we consider nonsense today, along with all other astrological beliefs. If it is not true today, it was never true. So for the story of the Magi to be true, it seems to me that we must somehow conclude that God made use of a false astrological belief if he did indeed somehow guide "Magi" by use of a "new star" in the heavens. Astrology, apparently, worked once and only once, for the Magi. (Many have raised the question how a star can possibly guide anyone to a specific town and then a specific house in that town.)
There are historical records of many atrocities by Herod, but there is no historical record confirming the alleged "Massacre of the Innocents." Also, the story is suspiciously similar to events surrounding the birth of Moses.
As to the "killing of the innocents, history is full of suspiciously similar events. That's one story I don't have trouble believing.
DeleteAs to the Magi/astrologers, I think they're a nice literary touch, and, after their encounter with the Newborn Christ they went home and threw away their astrological charts.
Sorry if that sounds flip. The point of the birth stories is that there was a sign that pulled in the lowly and the great who understood that something extraordinary had happened.
I like the old myth that the animals knelt when Jesus was born, if only because his birth was a sign that he was the agent by which peace would come to all creation, lion would lie down with the lamb, etc.
I believe there were signs when Christ was born. Whether they were exactly as advertised in MMLJ is moot.
It is worth noting that at the time of Christ, astrology and astronomy weren't distinguished as separate disciplines.
Delete"Astrology was widely accepted in medieval Europe as astrological texts from Hellenistic and Arabic astrologers were translated into Latin. In the late Middle Ages, its acceptance or rejection often depended on its reception in the royal courts of Europe. Not until the time of Francis Bacon was astrology rejected as a part of scholastic metaphysics rather than empirical observation. A more definitive split between astrology and astronomy in the West took place gradually in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when astrology was increasingly thought of as an occult science or superstition..."
Astrology was condemned at the Council of Trent, and in more recent catechisms. But in the 1st century AD it was intertwined with astronomy and studied by the intelligentsia.
I had never really pondered before whether I take the account of the three magi literally. I don't think we should feel obligated to take it literally. There are many literary forms to be found in the bible, even within a single work like a gospel, and we should try to understand the meaning of a particular passage according to the conventions of its form and what it intends to convey. I don't know precisely what genre the account of the three magi is an example of, but it would seem pretty Matthean to be a reflection of, and perhaps even a fulfillment of, something from the Old Testament. This would seem to be particularly true of the birth narrative.
DeleteI also don't think that, just because a passage isn't to be taken literally, and shows some signs of literary composition, it therefore follows that it was invented out of whole cloth. Who knows - maybe the Holy Family had some illustrious visitors from the East when Jesus was very young, and the story grew in the (re)telling. That might be how a form critic would approach the question. I don't suppose we'll know for certain, this side of heaven.
Btw, regarding astrology, I can see how it would be incompatible with Catholicism, but I don't think Catholicism is the standard to which we hold the magi. The church also teaches that elements of truth can be found in other faiths.
First, remember that it is the Catholic position (Dei Verbum) that "since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation." I suppose there are ways to square a "story that grew in the (re)telling" with inerrancy, but it seems problematic to me.
DeleteMy point about astrology is not that the Magi should be held to Catholic teaching (!), but that not only does the Catholic Church condemn astrology, we today know it to be false. The Magi (if they existed) may well have believed that a new star in the sky heralded the birth of a king, but—astrology being nonsense—they were wrong. However, then we are pretty much forced to explain the alleged star by assuming that although astrology is false (and now condemned by the Church), in this one case, God miraculously caused an astrological sign to appear to take advantage of the Magi's false beliefs.
David, not to belabor the point too much, but if God caused a physically observable sign to appear, such as perhaps a comet or an alignment of planets, that would be in the realm of astronomy, rather than astrology.
DeleteKatherine, we're expected to belabor points here. That's what blogs are for. :p
DeleteIt seems to me that if astrologers believe (falsely) that a new star in the sky harbingers the birth of a new king, and God causes (once and only once) a new star to appear in the sky for the purpose of alerting astrologers to the birth of a new king, then God is involving himself in astrology. I admit it is a very minor point in comparison to all the objections Raymond Brown raises in The Birth of the Messiah to the historicity of the story of the Magi.
The light of Christ...may appear to our shadow-enveloped eyes as a single pinhole of light. ... Christ may come to us...as ..a single pinhole of light. ..if we turn toward [it] ... we'll soon be wrapped in warmth and flooded with light.
ReplyDeleteJim, what would you say to those who don't see even a pinhole of light?
Hi Anne, I saw your comment yesterday, but I've been very busy and also wanted to take some time to think about it a bit. The truth is, I don't know exactly what I would say. I do think that God reaches out to us, perhaps even frequently, but that we miss quite a few of the signals that come our way.
DeleteFWIW, I have long thought that a prerequisite for conversion is an open heart. I don't manage to have an open heart all the time, and I suppose that is the case for most of us.
If the person who doesn't see the pinhole of light trusts me enough to have a full and candid conversation, I might spend some time with her trying to help her recognize some of those signs of light, or hope, our reaching out.