Tag Archives: Epiphany

New Heaven and New Earth

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Beatus of Liébana
Las Huelgas Apocalypse
Spain
1220

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband. (Apocalypse 20:1-2)

St. John has seen Hell and Satan bound with Death. Now he sees a new world emerge, clean and free of all stain. It is all that Isaiah hoped for: “Behold, I create new heavens and new earth” (Is. 65:17 and 66:2). It is everything that Enoch described: “The first heaven shall depart and pass away; a new heaven shall appear” (1 Enoch 91:16).

Some say that “there was no more sea” because the sea is the primaeval abyss, the chaos out of which matter emerged and there is no more chaos when judgement is complete. Some readers point out that seven markers of the fallen world are “no more” in the concluding chapters of the Apocalypse: the sea, death, mourning, crying, pain, every accursed thing, night. In the City of God, St. Augustine favors the idea that “the sea” is a euphemism for Death–cold, dark, deep, where a crowd can still be a vast collection of individuals in isolation. It is this Death that is no more in the new world adorned like a bride for her bridegroom and so the sea is “no more.”

In the Old Testament, the city Jerusalem is both a mourning virgin and a glorious bride. Now the time of her mourning has passed and her final victory and beauty are revealed. The bride of the Song of Songs takes her place alongside her heavenly bridegroom; during the Middle Ages, most sermons about the Song were also sermons about the Apocalypse and most sermons about the APocalypse were also sermons about the Song. The two texts go hand-in-hand. The Old Testament dreams of her glory and her dazzling garments are commonly read in church at Epiphany and Holy Saturday: the two days that most clearly anticipate the coming End and ultimate triumph of God.

Epiphany (the revelation of God’s glory in the darkness, the baptism of Christ when he descends into the water to slay the dragons hidden there as a dress rehearsal of his Passion) and Holy Saturday (Christ’s descent into the dark land of the dead–the sea mentioned earlier–to shatter the darkness with light and break the chains of those in prison there) are reflections in time of the eternal reality that is now revealed at the conclusion of the Apocalypse.

Epiphany. Holy Saturday. The conclusion of the Apocalypse. Jerusalem is adorned like a bride for her groom, the old context and environment of death and sin being swept away as the new context and environment of God’s glory is hidden no longer but emerges clearly for all to see.

The Magi and Their Dream

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The magi have a dream in which an angel warns them to avoid revealing the location of the Christ-child to King Herod. So they go home via another route; as a result, King Herod slays all the boys in the region of Bethlehem who are 2 years old or younger.

In the gospel according to St. Matthew, we read that the Magi–the 3 kings–were on the road for 2 years, following the star that announced the birth of Christ to Judea but had to consult King Herod about where in Judea the new-born king might be located. Herod consulted religious authorities and scholars who told him that Bethlehem was the most likely location. He sent the Magi there but asked them to come and tell him where in Bethlehem they found Christ. They did locate Christ, worshipping him with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (One story says that the gold was later stolen by the two thieves who were later crucified alongside Jesus. Another tradition suggests that Joseph and Mary used the gold to finance their travels when they fled to Egypt from Bethlehem.) But an angel warned the Magi all in a dream not to reveal the location of the Christ-child to King Herod and so they returned home via a different route, avoiding Herod. When Herod realized the Magi were not coming back to him, he ordered all the baby boys in the Bethlehem region to be killed, hoping to eradicate the baby who was the threat to his rule. But an angel had warned Joseph in a dream to take his family to Egypt and so they escaped, just in the nick of time; they returned to Judea only after Herod was dead.

The star the magi had followed was most likely a conjunction of Saturn (indicating the Last Days) and Jupiter (indicating a great king) in Pisces (associated with Judea and the people of Israel). Dreams were taken seriously as visitations of God, the angels, or other spirits. Dreams and astrology were acceptable tools of divination to discover or understand the will of God and were not considered “magic” by most people until fairly recently. But people who had such dreams might become proud or arrogant, telling others how special they were for having received such a visitation from God in a dream; many spiritual teachers had to warn their disciples against taking such dreams too seriously or becoming arrogant because of them. Rules were established for how to interpret such dreams and how much attention they should be given. But dreams can still inspire us or lead to new inventions, as this recent New Yorker article attests.

A shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral, according to tradition, contains the bones of the Magi. Reputedly they were first discovered by Saint Helena on her famous pilgrimage to Palestine and the Holy Lands. She took the remains to the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; they were later moved to Milan before being sent to their current resting place by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I in 1164.

Read more about the Magi in previous posts here and here.

Wise Men Finally Arrive–Only 2 Years After the Shepherds!

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Master of Vyšší Brod, a Bohemian master, c. 1350. The influence of Italian Byzantine painting was strong in the court of Charles IV.

According to the New Testament, the wise men arrived in Bethlehem when Jesus was already two years old! By then, the manger had been put away and the shepherds had all gone home. But the wise men (“magi”) had seen the conjunction (“star”) in the sky and had travelled from Babylon to Palestine to bring their gifts to the newborn King.

“We have seen his star in the East,” the magi told King Herod. “We have come to worship him.”

This news was a surprise to King Herod. He had no idea that a new King of the Jews had been born and had clearly NOT seen the star the magi had. What was the “star” which the magi claimed they had seen and which had told them to come find the newborn King in Judea? Since no one in Jerusalem seems to have seen it, the star could not have been a bright light in the sky or they would have noticed it. Since the Gospel text says that Herod later had all the boys aged two years or younger killed in his attempt to kill the Christ Child, the “star” must have been an astronomical event of some sort rather than a bright light or all the other parents whose children were butchered by Herod’s soldiers would have pointed out the house and said, “No! Not our children — the boy you want is in that house! There!” Also, the magi evidently had seen the star at least 2 years before and it had taken them that long to travel to Jerusalem.

When the wise men did finally arrive in Bethlehem, they are shown presenting their gifts to the Christ Child in the lap of his Virgin Mother. The oldest of the wise men is always in such a hurry to bow down before Christ that he trips and steps on his crown, as in the altarpiece below. (Click here to see a stunning collection of Nativity scenes, some with the shepherds and some with the wise men.)

I remember reading reports in December 1975 (my senior year of high school!) that the “star” was in fact a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation Pisces — and that this conjunction occurs once every 800 years! The magi, being astrologers, would have understood this to mean that a great king (Jupiter) who would usher in the End of Days (Saturn) was being born in Judea (Pisces). This conjunction occurred in December 1975, according to these reports, but I was unable to see it as I was not sure exactly where to look in the sky or on which date(s) to look.

Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423 (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi)