Adoring Like Shepherds and Wise Men
Martin Saints chapel at St. Titus parish.
Today we gather in school for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Today, kneeling before the Sacrament at the close of the Christmas season, we imitate the shepherds and the wise men who knelt before a baby.
When the shepherds and wise men encountered a baby, on the surface, nothing really changed in the world. Caesar and Herod were still on their thrones. In fact, Herod would soon flex his worldly power, killing who knows how many innocent but inconvenient babies. The shepherds were still poor, and who knows what kind of ignorance and paganism were still at large when the wise men returned to their homelands.
Nevertheless, the shepherds and the wise men made a profession of faith. Just as we do today when we pray before this Sacrament, the shepherds and the wise men confessed the Real Presence of the Creator. The shepherds and wise men professed to encounter the foundation of our existence, a personal Presence, a Word of wisdom, tenderness, and vulnerability. They gave themselves over to Him. They knelt in front of the baby, they gave him gifts. I wonder what happened next for them.
For ourselves, we know that when we yield our selves to this Presence, changes start to occur inside. Christianity is an experiential religion in the sense that you can’t fully prove every last jot and tittle; you shouldn't try to argue somebody into faith. But we can testify to anyone interested that is possible to experience these internal changes if you lean into it and put your weight on this Presence. The deeper you give yourself over to this love, to his Presence, the more it changes you, the more you experience the fruit of this communion.
At the beginning of the Christmas season, there were hints of how the first Incarnation might change us. On the cover of our Advent Lessons & Carols program, the baby Jesus is painted in a cave, foreshadowing his tomb. The baby Jesus is wrapped in swaddling clothes, foreshadowing his burial shrouds. In the more recent iconography, from last Sunday's Epiphany, the wise man's gift of myrrh foreshadows his coming death.
When we yield our selves to the Christian account of reality, our trust in God’s Presence burns away our vanity, our pretensions. It sweeps away everything false. When we participate in Jesus’s divine love, it is liberating to be free from what’s fake, even as we also sometimes experience conversion as a death to self, a death to selfishness and self-assertion.
It’s difficult to keep loving like that, and remain in that space, in worldly circumstances. That is why we constantly recapitulate our conversion in Adoration, in praying the Psalms, in the Eucharist, in confession, through theology and renewing our minds through education, and in many other ways. In a few weeks, it will be Lent, and we’ll be talking a lot about the cross and suffering. We commit to this way of life today, but when we look down the calendar, we see what it will cost, where it will take us.
But for today, like the shepherds and the wise men, we simply kneel. O come let us adore him. Because this love, this reality, this Presence - it’s also deeply beautiful and exciting. It's everything. It's the pearl of great price. It's the living water. It's the cleansing fire. Once we’ve been present to sanctity, once we’ve had a hint of who Jesus is, we want more. We cannot rest until we’re drunk in the Spirit, having drunk our full. Our hearts are ragged and restless, and we long for union and communion. But what can we give him? We give him our heart. This baby invites each one of us to an adventure.
How do we participate in this adventure? Students, you know my favorite advice about how to use silent prayer time before the Blessed Sacrament: ACTS. Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, Sacrifice. Everything else unfolds from here. Amen.
