Dear St. Pat's:

During the regular church service on January 8, the youth of Saint Patrick’s will offer a presentation entitled “The Fourth Wise Man,” based on a story by Henry Van Dyke.  This story causes me to wonder about the people in the story of Jesus’ birth, and the meaning of Epiphany.

When I was growing up in Vietnam, the missionaries imported "used" Christmas cards from the U.S. and gave them to us Vietnamese children who attended Bible classes.  I  recall that many of the cards showed a picture of three men riding camels and pointing their fingers toward a bright star.  From the 1925 Protestant version of the Vietnamese Bible, Matthew 2:1 reads: “When Jesus was born at Bethlehem, in Judea, there were several medical doctors from the East who came to Jerusalem.”  The same verse in a modern Catholic version of the Vietnamese Bible reads: “there were several astrologers from the East…”, while in the English Good News Bible it reads, “…some men who studied the stars came from the East to Jerusalem…”  No one knows exactly what those mysterious men did for a living, and how many of them came to visit the Holy Family, but the gifts they brought could give readers of the gospel story some hints: rich, wise and knowledgeable men came to visit the King of kings when he was born; and because three gifts were offered, it is assumed that there were three men.

I, for one, am not exactly concerned about who the wise men were and how many of them came to visit Jesus.  You and I may be more interested in the fact that while Luke tells about the shepherds—the poor who heard the good news—adoring Christ when he was born in Bethlehem, Matthew tells about the wise men—the elite who followed a star – seeking and worshiping him.  All of us are spiritually poor. God's love and glory have been revealed to all humanity.  Such a revelation was not broadly announced. It came in tranquility.

On our church calendar, Epiphany is celebrated on January 6^th.  The 4^th century church leaders in Alexandria, Egypt, chose the date that pagans commemorated the revelation of the sun god, to celebrate the appearance of God's Son.  The church fathers christianized that day in order to keep Christians, especially the newly converted, away from the pagan festivals.  When Christian missionaries from the West came to Vietnam, they saw the people there making paper lanterns with bamboo frames and of various shapes.  The missionaries started the making of the star lantern for Christmas.  Since then, churches in Southeast Asia have been decorated with the stars at Christmas.  The lanterns once used in various local traditional festivals now remind Christians that Christ was so great that even kings needed to seek and worship him.

As we gather at church during the season of Epiphany, we remind ourselves that our Lord has appeared, and that we all need to listen for his voice. At the heart of Epiphany is the Baptism of Jesus Christ.  According to the Gospel writer, when Jesus came up from the water, he heard a voice from heaven saying that he was God's beloved, and that in him God was well pleased.  The appearance of Christ is also the revelation of God's love to us.  What Jesus heard at the river of Jordan is also that which we seek to hear today.  The voice of love is ever present and hidden in our hearts, and its message is never loudly broadcast.  We begin to hear that voice, which is of the Holy Spirit, when we listen for it, rejecting the voice of the world.  The hearing of such love restores us to tranquility, which is the quietness of our heart.      Tinh+