Epiphany of the Lord

Is 60,1-6; Ps 71; Eph 3,2-3a.5-6; Mt 2,1-12

When the Magi arrive at the place indicated by the star they see “the child with Mary his mother” (Mt 2:11). The whole thing is extremely surprising: they look for a king and find a child. The solemnity of the Epiphany places us before this powerful image, that of the child. Symbolically, it represents the naked and defenceless humanity that asks for acceptance. A child is also the image of fragility; fragility that appeals and that wants to elicit good responses that make people live. Behold, here we have the style of God who saves man. Not strength, not power nor affirmation but marginality, weakness, and need. The challenge of faith is to recognize God there, in a wordless Word, in the question rather than in the answer. The eternal Word of God, a living and life-giving Word, now has a face, that of Jesus, who, through his gift, wants to drag everything and everyone into the bosom of the eternal Father. In a Christian text from the third century we read: «I became small (it is Jesus who speaks) so that through my smallness I could carry you up from where you fell…I will carry you on my shoulders». So how should we stand before the child King? Offering gold, incense and myrrh, that is, the gold of our love, the incense of our adoration, and the myrrh of our existence marked by laughter and tears. One last note. As Dante wrote, painting is “visible speaking”. We would then like to refer our readers to the Adoration of the Magi (1481-82) by Leonardo, who rereads our evangelical page in a singular way. For Leonardo the Epiphany is a phenomenon and not an abstract idea. The phenomenon surprises, animates all reality and dynamizes everything. Even the horses, which we see in the background, go wild at the divine apparition. Not only. The phenomenon leads to meditation. Here then is a young man on the right who invites you to look and on the left an old man who bows his head and reflects. Nature is also involved. There are no well-identified human figures but only acts that fall within the swirling orbit of the movement of mass, space and cosmos. After Christ, the great Vinci seems to tell us, everything revolves around him in a thousand ways, in a thousand attitudes, as many as there are human singularities. For Leonardo, the Epiphany marks a new beginning.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey