The Fourth Day Within The Octave Of The Epiphany. 9 January.

The Magi.

Stained-Glass Window.

Church of the Good Shepherd

(Rosemont, Pennsylvania).

Date: 1896.

Photo: 10 February 2019.

Source: Own work.

Author: Francis Helminski

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Fourth Day

Within The Octave Of The Epiphany.

9 January.

Text from “The Liturgical Year”.
   By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
      Volume 3.
      Christmas.
      Book II.

The Star, foretold by Balaam, having risen in The East, the three Magi, whose hearts were full of the expectation of the promised Redeemer, are immediately inflamed with the desire of going in search of Him.

The announcement of the glad coming of the King of the Jews is made to these holy Kings in a mysterious and silent manner; and hereby it differs from that made to the Shepherds of Bethlehem, who were invited to Jesus’s Crib by the voice of an Angel.

But the mute language of the Star was explained to them by God, Himself, for He revealed His Son to them; and this made their “Vocation” superior in dignity to that of the Jewish Shepherds, who, according to the dispensation of the Old Law, could know nothing save by the ministry of Angels.

The Divine Grace which spoke, directly and by itself, to the Souls of the Magi, met with a faithful and unhesitatingly correspondence.

Saint Luke says of the Shepherds, that “they came with haste” to Bethlehem; and the Magi show their simple and fervent eagerness by the words they addressed to Herod: We “have seen His Star in The East”, they say, “and we are come to adore Him”.