We don’t know a lot about the Wise Men. Just to say, we don’t even know how many there were (read the text again). The Greek word Magoi (where we get ‘magician’) signified many things in biblical times including priests from Persia, magicians, philosophers or in this case astrologers. They were ‘seekers’, looking to the skies for signs and guidance and had their hearts and minds set on finding God. They were also ‘outsiders’, coming from a faraway land. Their presence in Bethlehem makes a clear statement: God is for everyone, and not just a select few. Through this account Matthew is stressing the universality of Jesus’ message. They created quite a stir in Jerusalem and Herod saw their arrival as a warning and threat to his power, he was not open to new ideas, caught up in his own position of privilege.
Today, perhaps we can think about our own journeys to moments of epiphany. What guidance had brought us there? What gifts did we leave there? What gifts were we given there?
"Lord, there comes a point in our lives when we finally discover what we want to give our whole lives to…we look back on the long journey that brought us to this point… like the wise men seeing a star as it rose and deciding to follow it… The last part of the journey went quickly, suddenly we knew that we had found what we had been looking for, and it was like coming home, so that we went into the house, fell on our knees and opened our treasures” (Michel de Verteuil)
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