How did the Magi spend their time at Bethlehem?
We often think about how the Magi arrived at Bethlehem to worship Christ – but what did they do there, and how did Christ send them back?
We often think about how the Magi arrived at Bethlehem to worship Christ – but what did they do there, and how did Christ send them back?
Editor’s Notes
How the Infant Christ, fully conscious and wise, instructed the Magi interiorly.
That they left Bethlehem not only as worshippers, but as disciples.
Why their presence was a source of joy to the Sacred Heart of Christ.
He shows us that Christ actively teaches, sanctifies, and rejoices in the faith of those who come to Him with childlike hearts.
For more context on this episode, see Part I.
The Epiphany
The Thirty Years—Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life
Chapter X
St. Matt. ii. 1—12; Vita Vitæ Nostræ, § 12.
Burns and Oates, London, 1885. (1915 edition).
Headings and some line breaks added.
Our Lord and the Magi
It is easy, therefore, to think that these Sages were admitted to very high spiritual favours indeed.
The Child Whom they venerated in the arms of Mary was a child in age, but not in understanding, in the perfect use and exercise of all the faculties of mind and heart, and though, perhaps, He did not speak, in order not to break through the rule He had laid down for Himself, they must have understood that His mere look read their hearts, and not only read them, but enlightened them, instructed them, blessed them with an immense increase of spiritual graces.
They went back, not only His worshippers, but His scholars and His disciples. In this connection, we may see the Divine fitness of every circumstance of the Epiphany. It was well that the Sages should find our Lord in all the poverty and dependence and obscurity and humiliation which characterized the condition of the Holy Family. He had chosen all these circumstances, as has been said, and He made them the lesson that He read to mankind at this time of His Life, when He did not teach or instruct externally in any other manner.
If the offerings of the Sages show the perfection and completeness of their creed, we cannot doubt also that they drank in from the silent teaching of that Divine Child, as His eyes fell upon them, the lessons about the value of earthly goods, about the true riches, the true honour, the true greatness in the sight of Heaven which were embodied in every particular of His condition.
Our Lord intended them in after years to be great preachers of His Gospel, and the Beatitudes, on which so much of the Gospel is founded, looked out upon them in most eloquent teaching as they worshipped Him on Mary’s knee.
Spiritual Blessings
It is not easy to think that they left that school of perfection without being adequately instructed in all its principles. Our Lord did not summon them to His feet merely to pay Him homage and receive in return no treasure of spiritual wisdom.
We do not know that they ever met Him again, though this is not impossible. But they must have been furnished by their short audience, so to speak, with all the Divine lore which was necessary as the foundation of their future eminence in His Kingdom.
It is impossible to measure in words the rapturous joy with which they must have gazed on their Divine Teacher, as, moment after moment, the spiritual instruction and blessings which flowed in upon them mounted higher and higher. It was good for them to be there. “Let them make three tabernacles, for Jesus one, for Mary one, for Joseph one.”
Their hearts must have poured themselves out in gladness, and to whom could they speak of what they felt, to whom could they tell all the story of the star, and the inward inspirations which accompanied it, and their journey, and their reception at Jerusalem, and how it came about that they had found their way safely at last, under the guidance of their own star, save to that gracious Mother and her modest, silent spouse?
Mary and Joseph could have had few, if they had any, friends at Bethlehem to whom they could speak of all the history of God’s dealings with them since the Incarnation. These holy strangers were the first, perhaps, to whom the whole tale was told. The joy which is mentioned as the characteristic trait in the Sages, must have communicated itself, and been reflected in the calm, deep, unutterable exultation and thankfulness of the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph.
Far into the night, perhaps, that happy exchange of thoughts concerning the goodness and the “great things” of God may have lasted, and if St. Scholastica could not bear to cease from such conversation with her holy brother, it must have been with some sorrow that the blessed Sages parted for the night from that most blessed audience.
Joy of our Lord
We must also dwell for a moment on the rejoicing of the Heart of our Lord Himself. In later days, He rejoiced and gave thanks to His Father, as we are told by the Evangelists, because the secrets of the Kingdom had been hidden from the wise and prudent of the world and had been revealed unto little ones.
The Wise Strangers had knelt before Him, and on them He had shed many loving looks and poured out the tenderest affections of His Heart, though His condition as an Infant forbade Him from actually speaking to them except interiorly.
He had seen in them, as we have said, the first-fruits and promise of a long line of saints, of triumphs and glories for His Church which were to have no parallel in her history. He had seen in them, moreover, the simplicity, the gentleness, the docility, the fearless confidence and openness which make up the beauties of the childlike character, and thus they were little ones in His sight, though wise and prudent in the truest sense, wiser and more prudent than all that Jerusalem contained of learning and wisdom, wiser and more prudent than all the statecraft and subtle policy of the wicked King and his counsellors.
So their presence had been an occasion to Him of intense joy, and of great thanksgiving to His Father, to Whom He may have given His thanks in interior words like those which He used afterwards, “Even so, Father, for so it hath seemed good in Thy sight.”
And we should fail to exercise our intelligence rightly in the contemplation of these mysteries of the Holy Infancy, both before and after the Nativity, if we did not continually remind ourselves of the fulness and perfect maturity of all the mental faculties of the Sacred Humanity, and that our Lord was as perfectly alive to all that passed before and around Him in the providence of His Father—the places, the incidents, the persons, their thoughts and words and interior dispositions—as He was afterwards when He went among men as a Man like themselves to preach and to teach.
The Epiphany
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Thought-provoking meditation on the Epiphany. The idea that the Magi were not just worshipers but also students of Christ, learning from His silent teaching as an infant, adds a new dimension I hadnt considered. The emphasis on the childs full consciousness and active role in instructing them interiorly is a subtle but powerful theological point about Christs divine nature being present even in infancy.