In the last half hour every one of us has made a journey. Most of you have journeyed from your homes to this Church. I, too, made the journey—all two blocks of it from my house to this place.
Our lives are filled with journeys. We journey in time and space as we move from one place to another. Sometimes people journey to faraway places—people move great distances for work or pleasure. In a few months, I will make a journey of 110 miles to a new home in Bakersfield. All of us must journey, we must keep moving, or we die.
Most often, though, our journeys are rather mundane—we move about our homes, neighborhoods, shopping centers. We commute to school, visit friends, go the hospital or to the supermarket. Some journey to volunteer at the local soup kitchen or other charitable agency. Each week, each of us makes hundreds of such journeys without thinking much about it. How many of us stop to think that, with the exception of a few hours of sleep each night, we are constantly moving from one place to another?
We also journey through time. We move from one minute to the next, day to day, season to season. We are still journeying through the Christmas season. Life is a journey through space and time.
Some people have more intangible journeys. A good book, a fantasy or even a memory may carry us to another place. Sometimes our prayer practices take us on a journey. We journey through the mysteries of the Rosary, we follow the Stations of the Cross, we walk a labyrinth, we write in our journals—the words journey and journal have a common root which means ‘a passage or travel’ of sorts.
Today, on the Feast of the Epiphany, we follow some pagan astrologers who undertook a strange journey. That journey took them through time and space. They saw a star and they packed their camels, and started out on a journey that took them from their homeland somewhere in the east to the city of Jerusalem and finally to Bethlehem. This journey took time as well. Some estimate that they may have traveled for more than a month—depending on their starting point. But more importantly, these travelers were on a spiritual journey. And during the course of that journey, from beginning to end, they were changed.
They began their journey looking for a human child. They knew, from Jewish as well as their own prophetic traditions, that the appearance of a new star in the heavens signified the birth of someone great and powerful. They went in search of this newborn child. When they reached Jerusalem, they asked King Herod, “Where is the newborn king?” Herod, along with the astrologers, were looking for an earthly king—someone who would rise to power and control nations and peoples. That is where King Herod’s journey stopped. He refused to go any further and, as we know, he sought ways of killing this newborn king.
The astrologers, for their part, continued their journey and, when they arrived at the place where the star had indicated, they found a newborn child with his mother and father. They opened their gifts and presented him with gold, frankincense and myrrh. Then, they did something that tells us that their journey was ending in a different way than it had begun. They prostrated themselves and did the child homage. They went in search of a newborn child and arrived to find their God. Their journey through space and time was actually a spiritual journey where they would find fulfillment and meaning and joy.
Each of us is on a spiritual journey. It’s not enough to say, “I have journeyed to faraway places and have seen amazing things.” It’s not enough to say, “I have journeyed through the course of many decades in my life and have grown old.” It is not even enough to say, “I have journeyed through the Christmas season and have remembered the birth of Jesus.” That is not enough. There is more that must come from our journeying. Our journey must demonstrate that we have changed from beginning to end. Our journey must show that we have matured and have grown in wisdom and grace before God. Our journey must give witness to the change that has occurred in our lives. In short, our journey through time, space and spirit must bring us to Christ—the Messiah, the Son of God, our God. We are not searching for the little baby in the manger but the adult Christ who manifested himself on the cross as God’s son and whose resurrection from the dead invites us to place faith in him. Furthermore, our spiritual journey must bring us to a place where we understand that this Risen Christ is here among us and can be found in the Scriptures we hear, in the Eucharist we receive and in the people with whom we worship.
It is appropriate that the celebration of Epiphany falls in the first days of the new year. A new year invites us to undertake new journeys. Epiphany invites us to ready ourselves for another leg of the journey. Like the magi, we pack our gifts, our talents, our skills and our hopes. We move forward guided by the light of faith. And, through it all, we seek the face of God.
May each of us journey now from Epiphany through the rest of the year in search of God. Let us travel as wise men and wise women who know that Christ can be found at every step of the way.