Epiphany came and went this year and I hardly noticed. My family and I were attending a family gathering miles from home, celebrating my brother-in-law’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. In the past, when I’ve been home, I try to spend time reflecting on the magi’s journey to see the newborn child, their experience of really “seeing” who the infant would become. I move the wisemen closer to the manger in my terracotta nativity scene, and I take long last looks at my decorated Christmas tree, which I usually put away the next day. And in recent years, I remember an Epiphany homily by a dear friend that inspired me to go home and start writing about Sacred Strangers and how they often seem to know more than the believers in the Bible.
But this year, I was helping with my grandchildren as they navigated airports and strange houses, unfamiliar beds and bathrooms, extraordinary parks and a spectacular cocktail-dinner-dancing party on January 6, or Epiphany. At that party, held in the same Croatian hall where my husband and I had celebrated our wedding 40 years ago, my dear sister-in-law fell on the dance floor and couldn’t move. An ambulance collected her, she was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with a cracked pelvis and sacrum. Suddenly the next day’s Mass blessing and luncheon were canceled. She is in a rehab home now, working on resting and healing. So, I guess it isn’t surprising that I didn’t give the three wise men a second thought. But now, almost two weeks later, my nativity figures and decorated tree are still standing. Last week a long winter storm brought days of snow, cold, ice and freezing rain. School was canceled for four days, so I helped with babysitting whenever someone could get out of the house and, honestly, when everyone had to stay home, I reveled a bit in the quiet of my house. One of those mornings I was reading James Martin’s book, Learning to Pray, where he describes leading pilgrimages to the Holy Land and the importance of remembering those heightened experiences. Last year, at Epiphany, I stood shoulder to shoulder with twelve traveling companions in a tiny stone sanctuary. It was early morning – about 5 a.m. – and we’d gathered inside the Chapel of the Tomb. Most of us created a small circle in the outer room and three of our fellow travelers crowded into the next room, the place, tradition says, the body of Jesus was laid to rest more than two centuries ago. This tiny two-room shrine stands within the cavernous Church of the Holy Sepulchre, inside the ancient walled city of Jerusalem. Now, staring out my window at sheets of water skimming over layers of ice, the memories of those early morning hours a year ago flooded back to me. I remember that a friend had asked me to read a biblical passage during the service, something I’ve done many times before. But without thinking, I politely declined. A few minutes later, as the words of the Mass began, tears came to my eyes, not the quiet kind that sometimes strike me at church. These brought deep, shaking sobs that I struggled to keep to myself. Without much success, I guess. A friend passed me a tissue halfway through the service. My head filled with all my own traditional thoughts about Epiphany, laced through with reflections on standing at the spot where Jesus was buried on the same day that the magi had sought him out at his birth. I thought about their gift to all of us – that for some reason we can’t know, they recognized the significance of Jesus because they had literally seen him with their own eyes. I thought about my husband, who loved the story of Epiphany and insisted that we keep our tree up through the feast. And I remembered priests who had preached so many homilies on the feast through the years and somehow found something new to reflect on each time. A year later, I'm still not sure why I cried through Mass. My thoughts were the same ones that I have every year. I suspect it was the place, the ancient chapel carved from stone, so cold that I could feel the warmth from the friends standing near me, so quiet compared to the noise of the walled city that had not yet awakened for the day. Maybe it was the irony of standing where so many pilgrims had come before to reflect on Jesus death and finding myself thinking about his birth and the magi who had visited him. After the service, we were free to wander through the rambling church. It was still early morning and there were some visitors, but not the hoards we’d seen a few days earlier. As I walked the cavernous halls, I was still stunned by my emotional response during Mass. I was raised Presbyterian and the whole notion that “this is the place where . . . “ often fills me with skepticism. So on this day, I walked past the “traditional stone of anointing,” which a nun wipes with olive and rose oil every morning so that observers inhale and believe in that supposedly sacred place. I stood in a short line before the hole in the floor over “the place where" Jesus was crucified. I knelt, reached my hand into the dark hole and felt rock, as hard and unforgiving as any I’d ever felt before. I wandered down curving stone steps to a chapel dedicated to St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, who is said to have found a piece of Jesus’ cross. On the way, I passed massive stone walls, carved with rough Crusaders’ crosses, ancient graffiti left by centuries of visitors. In the next few weeks, as we visited many sacred places in Israel, my skepticism returned. Even now I can’t really account for my emotional response in the tomb. But that memory now nudged me, in a time filled with family worries and global disasters, to think about the wise men – even two weeks after Epiphany. I stare at a small icon of the nativity that I bought in Jerusalem. The holy family huddles above the curve of a sparkling star as three men bearing gifts make their way from the far-right corner to meet the new king. And I think about how those strangers have become for me a point of inspiration the whole year through. They traveled far, trusting in a star but also asking directions. They, too, were skeptical and chose not to follow the instructions of the court. When they found Jesus, they saw him for who he would be and honored him with gifts that seemed to recognize his fate and proclaim his promise. And then they wisely found their own way home without reporting to King Herod. Theirs is a story of trust, inquiries, skepticism, seeing, recognizing, honoring and sometimes going home a different way.
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