Kings to disciples: How the Magi spent 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 how did Christ send them back, and with what?
In this passage, Fr. Coleridge tells us what the Magi actually found in Bethlehem, including:
What we can learn about the Magi themselves, and the graces which they received
What it can teach us about cherished Catholic practices of pilgrimage and visits to the Blessed Sacrament
How the virtues and dispositions of the Magi exemplify profound faith, simplicity, and detachment, serving as models for Christians seeking to approach Christ with devotion
He shows us that the Epiphany is not only a revelation of Christ’s glory to the Gentiles but also a profound lesson in faith, devotion, and the transformative power of Divine grace.
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The Epiphany
The Thirty Years—Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life
Ch. X, pp 218-239. 1885
Burns and Oates, London (1915 edition).
Headings and some line breaks added.
Graces of the Princes
We may thus consider the Epiphany as a mystery in which very great honour was done to God by the reflection and acknowledgment of so many of His great attributes.
There is another side from which this mystery may be considered, namely, the side of the great and signal virtues and graces which shine out in the holy Princes themselves. If God was wonderful in the external providence by which He called them, invited them, guided them to the feet of our Lord, and protected them against all dangers and deceits, He was also very wonderful in the graces by which His external providence was accompanied.
We are ignorant of their history before they appear as the faithful searchers for Jesus Christ, but from that moment they are perfect patterns of correspondence to Divine grace, having, moreover, a character of their own which reminds us of the noble faith and courage of Abraham, the father of the faithful, who left his home and his father’s house at the bidding of God, not knowing whither he was to go.
The whole of their history is full of these eminent graces. The sight of the star, together with their knowledge of the revealed promises of God concerning the salvation of the human race, might have been shared with them by others under the same circumstances. It requires a devout and very high estimate of the importance of salvation and the dignity of Him by Whose means it was to be imparted to mankind, to prepare them to close with the invitation as they did, indeed to see in it anything addressed to themselves in particular.
They must have had a love for the promised Saviour, a desire and yearning for the salvation which He was to bring with Him, a great courage and detachment from the things of this world, a strong and firm resolution, and much generosity; they must have been buoyed up by a strong and joyous faith, and their demeanour throughout shows how fully they possessed the golden grace of simplicity.
Courage and faith
It was no slight trial to their faith to be received so coldly at Jerusalem. We do not know for how far on their journey they were accompanied or guided by the miraculous star, but they had certainly lost sight of it before they came to the holy city, and as they do not mention its disappearance, it seems natural to conjecture that it had been seen by them only before they left their homes.
In any case, they knew that Jerusalem was the place in which the Child was to be found, and in which they would meet with information as to the place where He was to be sought. Yet, notwithstanding the chill which must have fallen on their enthusiasm when they found that no one in Jerusalem was taking any interest in the matter, they moved on in their quest with as much unconcern and indifference to human respect as if they had been angels rather than men.
It is impossible to doubt that their interior graces must have been very magnificent indeed. It is the way of God to give very largely in such cases. These men were His favourites, chosen for a great act of homage and honour to His Son, and He saw in them the whole of the Gentile world, on which He was about to pour out the choicest treasures of His grace.
Interior intelligence
These thoughts prepare the mind for very large and noble conceptions as to the amount of interior intelligence which was communicated to these blessed Sages.
We have already mentioned the gifts made by them to our Lord as being commonly understood to represent points concerning Him on which their faith had fastened. They believed Him to be God, as is shown by the frankincense; they honoured Him as the promised King, by their offering of the gold; and they also knew the truth that He was the Redeemer Who was to die for man, as is shown by the myrrh.
But these few words express a very complete and deep faith indeed, a grasp of the whole Divine plan of the Incarnation which is not surpassed even in the Canticles of Zachary or of Simeon.
And we must add, in our considerations concerning the magnificent faith of these strangers, the ease with which they seem to have put aside the trial, or what might have been to others the trial, both of the incredulity of the Jews themselves and of the poor and mean condition in which they found the Saviour of the world, the King Whom they had come so far to honour.
The first pilgrims
There is one aspect under which the presence of these Sages to pay homage to our Lord may be viewed, in reference to a form of devotion which is very dear to some Catholic hearts.
The Eastern Princes are the first Christian pilgrims, and we naturally use the word as belonging to them. They did not come, as so many went up to the Temple, for the sake of receiving the blessings connected with some retreat or sacrificial observance, but for the simple satisfaction of their devotion. Thus, so early in the history of our Lord’s Life, we find this principle, as it were, introduced and sanctioned by Him.
The Epiphany thus opens the long series of pilgrimages of devotion, visits to holy places, the scenes of our Lord’s Passion in the first instance, and then the resting-places of the Saints, or the scenes of marvellous apparitions of our Blessed Lady, her Holy House, and a thousand other such spots. It would seem as if this kind of pious exercise, which involves, in many cases, long and laborious journeys, and much mortification and suffering, was very dear to our Lord, and it has always been made the occasion of many graces, interior and exterior.
The shrines to which pilgrimages are or were made were scattered, in the Christian ages, all over Europe, and the lives of many of the saints contain the records of their own love for this exercise of piety.
It would be a mistake to think, however, that the true pilgrim spirit, and the graces which are so often won from God and His saints, are only to be found in the case of very long and distant journeys. In the past Catholic days, a land like our own was studded with places of pilgrimage, holy wells, pictures of our Blessed Lady, as well as shrines where the bodies of the saints reposed. Thus pilgrimages were always at hand, so to say, and Christians might practise them and gain great spiritual or temporal favours without spending any long time upon them.
It would be a beautiful revival of the ancient spirit if, in this simple way, the practice were revived. No Catholic church now is without its statue or picture of our Blessed Lady, and the Stations of the Cross, and the devotion could be practised in this way without crossing the sea.
Visits to the Blessed Sacrament
The holy Sages, indeed, were pilgrims in a higher sense, for they came to visit, not a shrine or the tomb of a saint, but our Lord Himself.
Their devotion was the foundation of that of thousands of devout persons who make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament a part of the daily order of their life. Thus their aid may be invoked to obtain the dispositions, the ardent faith and hope and charity, with which such visits should be made.
Nor can it be doubted that a habit like this, which has become so ingrained in Christian life in these last centuries, must have existed from the very beginning, although we can find so few traces of it in actual history. “Wherever the body is,” as our Lord said, “there will the eagles be gathered together.”
The eagles would not be eagles if they were not drawn by the most powerful of instincts to their food, wherever it lies. And Christians would not be Christians if still more powerful instincts did not move them to come and pour out their hearts in adoration, thanksgiving, and prayer, before the silent majesty of our Lord in the Sacred Tabernacle.
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.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Thirty Years, Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life, ‘The Epiphany’, published 1885, this edition Burns and Oates, London, 1915, pp 218-239
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