Isaiah 60:1-6 / Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6 / Matthew 2:1-12
As we enter into the new year, it will certainly be a good thing to do some housekeeping and some cleaning up.
After all, it would be good to start the new year with some spring-cleaning and to get rid of the junk and the mess. As it is said “mess is stress”.
And we certainly need to de-stress, and maybe throwing away some junk can help us do that.
But before we bring in the trash bags and clear out everything, let us look at some of the stuff that we might just want to keep for a while.
Some things are really of no use anymore, but keeping them may help us to do some reflection about life.
One of the things that we might want to keep, at least for a while, is last year’s calendar.
Why of all things, last year’s calendar? That might be the first thing we want to throw away. We don’t want to be reminded of the year 2020. So why keep last year’s calendar then?
Well, it had been a rough and tough year. The days of 2020 were filled with cancellations, reschedules, new and numerous schedules, online meeting IDs and passwords, and other things.
But whatever it was, we survived 2020, we lived through it, and we also became stronger and tougher with it, all that of course, thanks be to God.
So, the 2020 calendar can be like a testimonial for us, reminding us that we stumbled but did not fall, we were down but not out, it was dark but there were little lights to keep us moving.
Yes, we didn’t stop and stagnate, but we moved on in 2020 and now we are ready to face 2021, no matter how it will be.
Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Epiphany, the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles, as represented by the wise men.
Epiphany also means a moment of sudden and great revelation or realization.
For the wise men, it was a moment of realization. They were comfortable in the homeland, and maybe they were looked up to by their own people as they had knowledge of the stars.
But it was a star, a peculiar star, that caught their attention. The star caught their attention, and they came to the realization that the star was beckoning them, calling them, to something mysterious and yet wonderful, to look for this infant King of the Jews.
So they got up and got moving, and yet, they were not that certain how things will turn out.
They only had the star to guide them and yet the star was not always there for them.
That was why they ended up in Jerusalem, and they were even used by King Herod to be his agents.
But they still managed to find their way to Jesus.
But did they expect to find the infant King of the Jews lying in a manger at the stable in the obscure little town of Bethlehem?
Whatever their expectations, it was by Divine revelation that gave them the realization that the infant lying in the manger is the one they were looking for.
They acknowledged that the infant was a King, as symbolized by the gold, is Divine as symbolized by the frankincense, and is human as symbolized by the myrrh.
What we can learn from the wise men is that they had to look and listen and think about what God was showing them.
The wise men offered gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Infant Jesus.
We offer our eyes, our ears and our minds to Jesus.
Jesus will open our eyes to see what we need to see, open our ears to hear what we need to hear, and open our minds to understand what He is showing us.
Like the wise men we journey on into 2021, with the only certainty and assurance that Jesus our Lord and Saviour, will guide us through the year, so that we can see Him in all things, and to give thanks to Him for all things.