Solemnity of the Epiphany: Driven By Fear
Today’s Gospel speaks of the three mysterious figures—magi, they are called—who came from the east, guided by a particular star to the child Jesus.
It all calls to mind a more ancient figure in the Scriptures, a magician-prophet named Balaam. In the Book of Numbers (chapters 22-24), we read of how the Israelites were making their way from Egypt to the Promised Land, passing near the land of Moab, whose king Balak, observing them from the distance, saw them as a threat. King Balak sent servants to summon Balaam, who like the Magi in today’s Gospel, was from the East, to hire him for the purpose of calling down a curse upon the Israelites.
Balaam was prepared to carry out the king’s request, when God intervened and spoke to him, and commanded him to speak what was revealed to him:
“The oracle of Balaam, son of Beor, the oracle of the man whose eye is true….
How pleasant are your tents, Jacob; your encampments, Israel! Like palm trees spread out,
like gardens beside a river, like aloes the LORD planted, like cedars beside water….”
And then, as though seeing into the future, when the Jewish people would eventually have a king, Balaam spoke thus what God further revealed:
“I see him, though not now; I observe him, though not near: A star shall advance from Jacob, and a scepter shall rise from Israel….”
The star and the kingly scepter Balaam saw were signs of a future king from among the people of Israel—even if he would have had no further understanding of what all this vision would mean. Having seen what God wanted him to see, having declared what God wanted him to say—all to the disappointed of Moab’s King Balak—Balaam made his journey home, back to the east.
Many centuries later, would be another king, known to us as Herod the Great, born roughly 70 years before the birth of Jesus. His family ancestry was not-Jewish. They were from Edom, the kingdom immediately south of Moab. Herod’s family—wealthy and influential, had converted to Judaism a half century before his birth.
As a young man, Herod was appointed by the Roman government to serve as governor of Galilee (47–37 BC) and then eventually as king of the Jews (37–34 BC). He was known for his massive building projects that brought him fame throughout the Roman Empire and for imposing heavy taxes that caused hardship among the Jewish people.
He was detested by the Jewish people. The last ten years of his life were turbulent, as he became increasingly suspicious about plots from within his family. He even killed his own wife, mother-in-law, and three eldest sons out of fear of court conspiracies. His paranoia about potential family rivals became so notorious that the governor of neighboring Syria once said it would safer to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.[1]
As we hear today, he was ‘greatly troubled’ by the inquiry from the strangers from the East. These magi—who undoubtedly would have known of the prophetic utterances of their ancestor, the magician-prophet Balaam—were led by a star like the one, Balaam himself beheld.
And despite Herod’s deceitful request to the magi for information regarding the child’s location, God again intervened, warning them to avoid further contact with the ill-intending king. Like Balaam, they returned to the east.
Herod the Great reminds us that the Good News, born unto us—well, not everyone received it as good news. But aside from that, today’s readings speak to us about how fear can affect a person, just as it did both King Balak of Moab and King Herod, even more, Herod’s life reveals how fear can drive all sorts of irrational and even dangerous impulses.
While human society and its people have likely never been able to entirely rise above all causes for fear in any age, no doubt, it has manifest itself in powerful ways in this pandemic. And let’s be honest: in some ways the fear is generated by movements—whether, political, corporate, or simply ideological—movements that fear-monger, using us as pawns.
Whether we’re crippled in fear due to the virus itself and the fear of catching it, or instead, our fears are the result of controls we believe are imposed upon us, controls that we believe deny us our freedoms—regardless of which—or the combination thereof—these fears are potentially giving way to behaviors that are irrational and possibly even dangerous in some way.
I’ve heard it said that the opposite of love is not hate, but instead, fear. If our primary vocation is to Christian love, agape love, it gets compromised by the fear that we allow to live within us, that drives our behaviors. Let us pray with humility to examine our fears and what they do to us. Let us call upon our Lord for the grace to conquer all our fears and to love like Jesus.
Perhaps it’s in prayerful gazing upon the tender, yet powerful image of the newborn in the manger, where God can speak to us, as He once spoke to Balaam and later to the magi. Perhaps it’s in that homage, and hearing Him speak to us, pushing that undercurrent of fear aside, that we can live in the Good News, born unto us on Christmas Day, and all that he brings.
[1] Ibid.