Text taken from The Liturgical Year,
by Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Translated from the French by Dom Laurence Shepherd, O.S.B.
Volume 3.
Christmas - Book II.
English: The Magi Journeying.
Français: Les rois mages en voyage.
Artist: James Tissot (1836–1902).
Date: Between 1886 and 1894.
Current location: Brooklyn Museum, United States.
Credit line: Purchased by public subscription.
Source/Photographer: Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum;
Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2006, 00.159.30_PS1.jpg.
(Wikimedia Commons)
The Patriarchs and the Prophets had propagated the tradition; and the Gentile world gave frequent proofs that the tradition prevailed even with them.
When Adam, in Eden, first beheld her whom God had formed from one of his ribs, and whom he called Eve, because she was the Mother of all the living, (Gen. iii 20.), he exclaimed: "This is the bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. Man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be two in one flesh." (Ibid. ii 23, 24).
In uttering these words, the Soul of our first Parent was enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and, as we are told by the most profound interpreters of the Sacred Scriptures (such as Tertullian, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, etc), he foretold the alliance of the Son of God with His Church, which issued from His Side, when opened by the spear, on the Cross; for the love of which Spouse, He left the right hand of His Father, and the heavenly Jerusalem, His mother, that He might dwell with us in this our Earthly abode.
Adoration of the Magi.
Artist: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682).
Date: 1655 - 1660.
Current location: Toledo Museum of Art,
Ohio, United States.
Source/Photographer: JAFwsBSXui7rdg at Google Cultural Institute.
(Wikimedia Commons)
In the course of time, the ancient alliance that had been made between God and the people of Israel was broken; the Semitic race fluctuated in its religion, and finally fell into infidelity; and at length God adopts the family of Japheth, that is, the Gentiles of the West, as His own people; for ages, they had been without God, and now the very Seat of religion is established in their midst, and they are put at the head of the whole human race.
Later on, it is the great God, Himself, that speaks to Abraham, promising him that he shall be the father of a countless family. "I will Bless thee," says the Lord, "and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven" (Ibid. xxii 17). As the Apostle tells us, more numerous was to be the family of Abraham, according to the faith, than that which which should be born to him of Sara. All they that have received the faith of a Mediator to come, and all they that, being warned by the Star, have come to Jesus as their God — all are the children of Abraham.
The Mystery is again expressed in Rebecca, the wife of Isaac. She feels that there are two children struggling within her womb (Ibid. xxv 22); and this is the answer she received from God, when she consulted Him: "Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be divided out of thy womb; and one people shall overcome the other, and the elder shall serve the younger" (Ibid. xxv 23). Now, who is this "younger" child that overcomes the elder, but the Gentiles, who struggle with Juda for the light, and who, though but the child of the promise, supplants him who was son according to the flesh ? Such is the teaching of Saint Leo and Saint Augustine.
Photo: Alexander R. Pruss.
Current location: National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC. America.
This File: 23 November 2007.
User: User:Jan Arkesteijn.
(Wikimedia Commons)
When Israel had gone out of Egypt, and was in possession of the Promised Land, Balaam cried out, setting his face towards the desert where Israel was encamped: "I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not near. A Star shall rise out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel . . . Who shall live when God shall do these things ? They shall come in galleys from Italy; they shall overcome the Assyrians, and shall waste the Hebrews, and at the last they themselves also shall perish" (Num. xxiv 17, 23, 24). And what kingdom shall succeed this ? The kingdom of Christ, who is the Star, and the King that shall rule for ever.
David has this great day continually before his mind. He is for ever celebrating, in his Psalms, the Kingship of his Son according to the flesh: He shows him to us as bearing the Sceptre, girt with the Sword, anointed by God his Father, and extending his kingdom from sea to sea: He tells us how the Kings of Tharsis and the Islands, the Kings of the Arabians and of Saba, and the Princes of Ethiopia, shall prostrate at his feet and adore him: He mentions their gifts of gold (Ps. lxxi).
In his mysterious Canticle of Canticles, Solomon describes the joy of the spiritual union between the Divine Spouse and His Church, and that Church is not the Synagogue. Christ invites her, in words of tenderest love, to come and be crowned; and she, to whom he addresses these words, is dwelling beyond the confines of the land where lives the people of God. "Come from Libanus, my Spouse, come from Libanus, come ! Thou shalt be crowned from the top of Amana, from the top of Sanir and Hermon, from the dens of the lions, from the mountains of the leopards" (Cant. iv 8). This daughter of Pharoah confesses her unworthiness: I am black, she says; but, she immediately adds that she has been made beautiful by the grace of her Spouse (Ibid. i 4).
Alsace, France,
also known as Hohenburg Abbey.
The following image of The Three Magi (see, below)
was originally created in Hohenburg Abbey.
Photo: 29 June 2009.
Source: Own work.
Author: Mattana.
(Wikimedia Commons)
The elder Tobias, whilst captive in Babylon, prophesies the same alliance. The Jerusalem, which was to receive the Jews after their deliverance by Cyrus, is not the City of which he speaks in such glowing terms; it is a new and richer and lovelier Jerusalem. "Jerusalem ! City of God ! Bless the God Eternal, that He may rebuild His Tabernacle in thee, and may call back all the captives to thee. Thou shalt shine with a glorious light. Nations from afar shall come to thee, and shall bring gifts, and shall esteem thy land as holy. For they shall call upon the great Name in thee . . . All that fear God shall return thither. And the Gentiles shall leave their idols, and shall come into Jerusalem, and shall dwell in it. And all the kings of the Earth shall rejoice in it, adoring the King of Israel" (Tob. xiii, xiv).
It is true, the Gentiles shall be severely chastised by God on account of their crimes; but that justice is for no other end than to prepare those very Gentiles for an eternal alliance with the great Jehovah. He thus speaks by His Prophet, Sophonias: "My judgement is to assemble the Gentiles, and to gather the kingdoms: And to pour upon them My indignation, all My fierce anger: For with the fire of My jealousy shall all the Earth be devoured. Because then I will restore to the people a chosen lip, that all may call upon the name of the Lord, and may serve Him with one shoulder. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia shall My suppliants, the children of My dispersed people, bring Me an offering" (Soph. iii. 8, 9, 10).
He promises the same mercy by His Prophet, Ezechiel: "One King shall be over all, and they shall no more be two nations, neither shall they be divided any more into two kingdoms. Nor shall they be defiled any more with their idols: And I will save them out of all the places in which they have sinned. And they shall be My people, and I will be their God. And they shall have One Shepherd. And I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: And I will establish them, and will multiply them, and will set My Sanctuary in the midst of them for ever" (Ezech. xxxvii 22 et seq.).
Herrad of Landsberg (1130 - 1195) was a 12th-Century Alsatian Nun and Abbess of Hohenburg Abbey, in the Vosges mountains, France. She is known as the author of the pictorial encyclopaedia Hortus Deliciarum (The Garden of Delights). Herrad of Landsberg was born about 1130 at the Castle of Landsberg, the seat of a noble Alsatian family. She entered Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges mountains, about fifteen miles from Strasbourg, at an early age. She became Abbess there in 1167 and continued in that Office until her death.
These illustrations are from a reproduction by Christian Maurice Engelhardt, 1818. The original perished in the burning of the Library of Strasbourg during the siege of 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War. The text was copied and published by Straub and Keller, 1879-1899.
Date: 1818.
Source: Hortus Deliciarum.
Author: Made at the Hohenburg Abbey, France, 1185 by Herrad of Landsberg (1130 - 1195) These illustrations are from a reproduction by Christian Maurice Engelhardt, 1818.
(Wikimedia Commons)
After the Prophet, Daniel, has described the three great Kingdoms which were successively to pass away, he says there shall be a Kingdom "which is an everlasting Kingdom, and all kings shall serve Him" (the King) "and shall obey Him." He had previously said: "The power" (that was to be given to the Son of Man) "is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away; and His Kingdom shall not be destroyed" (Dan. vii 27).
Aggeus thus foretells the great events which were to happen before the coming of the One Shepherd, and the establishment of that everlasting Sanctuary which was to be set up in the very midst of the Gentiles: "Yet one little while, and I will move the Heaven and the Earth, and the sea, and the dry land. And I will move all nations, and the Desired of all nations shall come" (Agg. ii 7, 8).
But we should have to cite all the Prophets in order to describe in all its grandeur the glorious spectacle promised by God to the world, when, being mindful of the Gentiles, he should lead them to the feet of Jesus. The Church has quoted the Prophet, Isaias, in the Epistle of the Feast, and no Prophet is so explicit and so sublime as this son of Amos.
The expression of the same universal expectation and desire is found also among the Gentiles. The Sibyls kept up the hope in the heart of the people; and in Rome, itself, we find the Poet, Virgil, repeating, in one of his poems, the oracles they had pronounced. "The last age," says he, "foretold by the Cumean Sibyl, is at hand; a new and glorious era is coming: A new race is being sent down to Earth from Heaven. At the birth of this Child, the iron age will cease, and one of gold will rise upon the whole world . . . No remnants of our crimes will be left, and their removal will free the Earth from its never-ending fear" (Eclog. iv).
The Magi follow the Star to Bethlehem.
Image: FREE BIBLE IMAGES
If we are unwilling to accept, as did Saint Augustine and so many other holy Fathers, these Sibylline oracles as the expression of the ancient traditions — we have pagan philosophers and historians, such as Cicero, Tacitus, and Suetonius, testifying that in their times the world was in expectation of a Deliverer; that this Deliverer would come, not only from the East, but from Judea; and that a Kingdom was on the point of being established which would include the entire world.
O Jesus, our Emmanuel ! This universal expectation was that of the holy Magi, to whom Thou didst send the Star. No sooner did they receive the signal of Thy having come, than they set out in search of Thee, asking: "Where is He born, that is King of the Jews ?" The oracles of Thy Prophets were verified in them; but if they received the first-fruits of the great promise, we possess it in all its fullness.
The Alliance is made, and our Souls, for love of which Thou didst come down from Heaven, are Thine. The Church is come forth from Thy Divine Side, with the Blood and Water; and all that Thou dost for this, Thy chosen Spouse, Thou accomplishest in each of her faithful children.
We are the sons of Japheth, and we have supplanted the race of Sem, which refused us the entrance of its tents; the birthright which belonged to Juda has been transferred to us. Each age do our numbers increase, for we are to become numerous as the stars of heaven. We are no longer in the anxious period of expectation; the Star has risen, and the Kingdom it predicted will now for ever protect and Bless us.
The Magi follow the Star to Bethlehem.
Image: FREE BIBLE IMAGES
The Kings of Tharsis and the Islands, the Kings of Arabia and Saba, the Princes of Ethiopia, are come, bringing their gifts with them; all generations have followed them. The Spouse has received all her honours, and has long since forgotten Amana and Sanir, and Hermon, where she once dwelt in the midst of wild beasts; she is not black, she is beautiful, with neither spot nor wrinkle upon her, but in every way is worthy of her Divine Lord.
Baal is forgotten for ever, and she lovingly speaks the language given her by her God. The One Shepherd feeds the one flock. The last Kingdom, the Kingdom which is to continue for ever, is faithfully fulfilling its glorious destiny.
It is Thou, O Divine Infant !, that bringest us all these graces, and receivest all this devoted homage of Thy creatures. The time will soon come, dear Jesus !, when Thou wilt break the silence Thou hast imposed on Thyself in order that Thou mightest teach us humility — Thou wilt speak to us as our Master. Caesar Augustus has long ruled over Pagan Rome, and she thinks herself the kingdom that is to have no end; but she and her Rulers must yield to the Eternal King and his eternal City: The throne of Earthly power must now give place for the Throne of Christian Charity, and a new Rome is to spring up, grander than the first.
The Gentiles are looking for Thee, their King; but the day will come when they will have no need to seek Thee, but Thou, in Thy Mercy, wilt go in search of them, by sending them Apostles and missioners who will preach Thy Gospel to them.
The Magi wonder at the emergence
of the bright new Star.
Image: FREE BIBLE IMAGES
Show Thyself to them as He to whom all power has been given in Heaven and on Earth; and show them also Her whom Thou hast made to be Queen of the Universe. May this august Mother of Thine be raised up from the poor Stable of Bethlehem, and from the humble dwelling of Nazareth, and be taken on the wings of Angels to that Throne of Mercy which Thou hast made for Her, and from which She will Bless all peoples and generations with Her loving protection.
We will now borrow some of those Canticles wherewith the several Churches were formerly wont to celebrate the Epiphany. Prudentius, the Prince of our Latin Poets, thus sings the Magi's journey to Bethlehem.
In addition, there is quoted a beautiful Prayer from the Sacramentary of the ancient Gallican Church. And, a Sequence taken from the ancient Roman-French Missal, plus a Hymn composed by Saint Ephrem, the sublime Poet of the Syrian Church, which thus sings the mysteries of the Birth of Jesus.
In addition, there follows a beautiful Sequence, used by some Churches in the Middle Ages, which sings in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mother, the first Verse of which is:
Verbum bonum et suave,
Personemus illud Ave
Per quod Christi fit conclave
Virgo, mater, filia.
Let us sing that word,
so good and sweet: Ave — Hail !,
It was by that salutation
that the Virgin was made
the Sanctuary of Christ
— the Virgin, who was both
His Mother and His Child.
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