Friday, December 3, 2010

Wrapped In My Memory Tab

- The visit of the Magi Christmas - December 25, 2010



The visit of the Magi

1 After Jesus' birth in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem 2 Saying, Where is the king of the Jews is born? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to do him homage. 3 At this news King Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. 4 He gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people for ask them where Christ should be born. 5 They said to him: In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it was written through the prophet:

6 And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah,

you n ' 're certainly not the less

in the Board of Governors of Judah

because you will come a leader

who will shepherd my people Israel .

7 Then Herod summoned the Magi secretly and was made clear by them the time of the appearance of the star. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying: Go for detailed information on the child when you found it, please let me know so that I too I come to prostrate myself before him.

9 After hearing the king, they departed. But the star they had seen in the preceding, arriving over the place where the child was, she stopped. 10 At the sight of the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 They entered the house, saw the child with Mary his mother, and fell at his feet to worship him, they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 Then, divinely warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they returned to their country by another way.

Our imagination leads us to meet these travelers from the East whose story made headlines. Through the pitfalls incomprehensible that chance put under their feet, the Magi, the stars in their eyes followed the path that the Almighty traced to them. But how could they be sure of their God as death prowling around them, like a jackal of the desert? Their world does not look like an oriental tale, even if the narrative that relates their story like it. There was a child in front of them to the whims of a tyrant like ago today before our eyes a world given the vagaries of climate change. How can we believe that a benevolent God was guiding their steps, when so many children were being sacrificed to the bloodthirsty vengeance with a deposit? how can we believe that a benevolent God inhabits our world so that the earth in its last throes continues to bear death in its midst? These are the questions that haunt all seekers of God.


Today we put our in the footsteps of those illustrious personages. We join with them the numerous list of those who are seeking God. Everyone goes at the speed of its own beast, some mounted on horses go fast, faster than the others who prefer the slow pace of their camels. They all go to one place, one where we meet God.

These mysterious figures from the East followed the same path once followed by Abraham before them and that any seeker of truth must be followed. It is to seek God outside his own world. It seeks, in the sky, the stars in the afterlife in the books. During this journey of initiation, through the deserts of the world or simply the meanderings of the literature, the walker arrives necessarily in the high places of spirituality. Infallibly not wear it in his holy places that others have trod before him. It is also mages their steps. This is the direction that we turn our eyes. But God is not necessarily in the holy places and mages have had such sad experience. They have not found in the holy city of Jerusalem

How many of us do not they stumbled on the same stumbling blocks ? They went to seek God on the sites where tradition has preserved traces of its passage and they found nothing. The high places of tradition do not provide them the echoes of past greatness, but say nothing to the heart from the presence of God. At the foot of the cathedrals erected by history, tradition often remains empty hope. How of God seekers, disappointed by the trip did not look further and have their eyes focused elsewhere. At this point in their research they have not understood that God does not let itself be in the experience of others, or even in the evocation of tradition, it was highly respectable. It may be found in a face to face with oneself.

Who are you, you who seek God? What is the meaning of your story? What do you serve on this earth? If you find the answers to these questions, you're not very far from God. The initiatory journey is not necessarily a shift in space, it is not necessarily browsing the venerable traditions, it do can be done not by browsing the writings of thinkers. It is in self-discovery. It is in the discovery of the small child we were and that we find in the child from the nursery.

child is in this where God hides the traveler in search of spirituality must find itself. It is a fragile too, and his fortune, if he has not used anything. No need to myrrh and frankincense, need science or graduation. God is there the naked truth of each. God is present in us simply because we exist. Our personal story finds its origin in the discovery of God who lives already since our destiny our childhood and gives her sense. By recognizing the fragility of a child lying in the straw, each discovers that God is the source of his own life and he leaves now rich he has become.

encounter with God is within oneself. It begins with a reflection that helps us understand that God gives meaning to everything we do. This discovery is only the beginning of the journey we must now follow Jesus that history to prevail in the land of Egypt to escape the death that awaits him. Our itinerary would have to stop there. It is not. For it is here in this desert that death challenges our certainties.

Death is the only weapon found by Herod to seize the pathetic life of a child. Death is the only weapon available anyone who wants to build a world without God and dictate their own way. Death is the negation of God and lurks around each.

That is why the unbearable story of the death of innocent children takes place here in the Gospel. It appears to us as an open question, to provoke our faith in research and power our questions: Why did God permit this? Why did he not hoped for the miracle to save the children stricken by the sword of his soldiers? Why did not he hoped the miracle when the earth shook in Haiti? The question then comes to take the place of God in our desert interior. It feeds our reason and confuse our thinking? It stands as a challenge to hope.

Death is the last challenge on the path of discovering God. It a realization that life does make sense that when we understand that God is the origin and it is also its end. No sooner did we open to the presence of God as we grow our questions to settle our accounts with him.

We then daring to say that the greatest obstacle to our faith is constituted by all the frustrations that death causes in us. This is not only death ahead at the end of our lives, but all these little deaths that are all the provocations of our existence. We do not feel fully satisfied with ourselves. We consider ourselves too big or too small. The face that reminds us of our mirror does not suit us more. We hold God responsible for everything that afflicts us. Why hast thou done so? Why did you let him go on flights that have crashed all those who do not come back? Supreme reaction of the young that we have never ceased to be, we throw in the face of this God in whom we still have the hard to believe: "I did not ask to be born! "

Well so be it! Acknowledge God as our frustrations are real because we are suffering, we are far from perfect envied. But we have yet to discover that all these frustrations we blame God for not having repaired or permitting to provide opportunities for him to come to us. By its presence in us makes it possible perfection that we blame him for not having done, since everything can be perfect as God himself makes perfect. Being perfect is about being acceptable to God, and we are all. Perfection is in the order of the invisible, like love and like eternity and all three are the prerogative of God.

If God is in everyone, everything takes on new meaning. The voids in our lives are touched with hope and our existence becomes an oasis where it pleases God to inhabit. And if death surprised us when we least expect it, we must believe that he gets carried away by her with us to pull a doom. It is the mystery of the resurrection is another adventure with God that begins here and now. This is the plan God made for everyone when he lets meet by in the child from the nursery.

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