We celebrated the Epiphany this Sunday and Monday, according to which calendar you might use. On this feast we celebrate the arrival of the Three Magi, bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh, with its cosmic significance that the Good News is meant not just meant for and received by the Chosen People, but by all people of good will, as the angels sang at the Lord’s Birth. Gifts that show forth Christ’s offices of Prophet, Priest and King; gifts that are costly; gifts that took great effort for the Magi to deliver. These are the gifts we recall.
In Latin Europe, Epiphany - “Little Christmas,” as some call it — is the day for gifts exchange and for public celebration, Christmas itself being more of an intimate family holiday. Even the traditional Latin-culture Christmas carols reflect the homeliness and the intimacy of this event that changes the course of human history forever.
In Spain, one of the most beloved Christmas carol, which is really an Epiphany carol, is “The Little Drummer Boy.” Not for Spaniards the grandeur and majesty of Lessons and Carols from a cathedral church, or the great German and English chorals (they like those, too, just not as much). No, one of the most beloved songs is about a little boy who plays a lowly instrument in honor of the newborn king. It seems like nothing, really: but it is everything that he has to give, and as he gives it with love — which is what the Blessed Trinity most wants from us — it is the perfect gift, recalling the widow’s mite and the Savior’s praise of those who give all they have even though the amount be objectively small.
Those would be like you and me. Most of us will not do great things, undertake deeds that bend the arc of history, build institutions that advance the Gospel and serve generations for centuries to come, give speeches that echo through the corridors of time. No, ours is the hidden life, the life of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the focus of this time between the Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord, when His public ministry begins.
Not great deeds: small deeds done with great love. We save the world and our own souls by helping to save the souls the Lord has entrusted to our care, beginning with our spouses and our children and grandchildren, then radiating out into our circles of friendship, work, and civic commitments. To neglect these matters we might dismiss as small as we head off into the world in search of fame, power, and glory — for God, of course — is to neglect the heart of the matter. We wonder what specific thing God has entrusted to us, as Cardinal Newman’s prayer has it. Well, who else is married to your spouse? Who else is entrusted with the care of your children, grandchildren, parents, and others in your care? Who else is entrusted with your vocation and work.
But then ask yourself: is the salvation of your soul, of your spouse’s, of those of your family members and friends, of your colleagues, such a small thing? The redemption of each one of us was one by the Savior, one drop of whose Precious Blood was sufficient for the salvation of the entire world. He shed his Blood for you and for me, and for everyone else, until there was no blood left to shed. We pass over those in our immediate care to our peril.
What is great in the eyes of the world is small in the eyes of the Lord. What is great to Him is small to us. Our journey to Bethlehem this Advent and Christmas taught us that to escape the judgement that awaits the unrepentant, we undergo the Divine Reversal, the willing conversion of heart and mind that makes us able to see the things that matter to God. Our journey now from Bethlehem to Egypt and our sojourn there and elsewhere in the hidden years teach us that the things unseen by others are seen by God, and that anonymous souls such as you and I are cherished, bought as we are by a great price. Let us make most of the time that befalls us, fulfilling our ordinary duties with extraordinary love in praise of Him who has called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light.