2020 was not the year for planning trips. If your experience was anything like mine, you had to settle for Plan D of summer vacation, with some measure of reluctance. I think it was about this time last year when I began to envision the exciting possibilities for summer vacation to celebrate a significant birthday. Alas, it was not to be. As the pandemic emerged and then raged, each new iteration of plans morphed into another, each seemingly less appealing than the next.
2020 was not the year for planning, period. If you are like me and enjoy organizing, looking ahead, and mapping things out, you most likely found 2020 to be a colossal frustration. Each week looked different from the next. Here at Good Shepherd, we found ourselves inching towards a larger capacity for in-person attendance, only to find the church doors closed to public worship a few weeks ago. Not even aspects of the liturgical calendar are as entrenched as they might usually seem. Will there even be ashes this year on Ash Wednesday? Details that we had taken for granted before carry far less weight than the machinations of a biological mystery.
2020, in some ways, may have pushed us to reimagine our own estimation of diligence. For those of us who are naturally geared towards details, hard work, and excessive planning, the 2020 curve ball was a sober reminder that we are not in control. It seems that, in spite of our best laid plans, we are deceiving ourselves if we think we are the ones leading. 2020 revealed that for those of us who value diligence and planning, there are identifiable limits to what we can do. We are being led no matter how hardworking and persistent we may be and no matter how much we want to be the leaders. Who is leading us is another matter.
Something tells me that Herod would have found 2020 very frustrating. After the magi enter Jerusalem inquiring about the Christ child, Herod, gripped by fear, wants to know every single detail of this unusual birth. He first asks the chief priests and scribes where the child is to be born. He then secretly summons the magi to find out exactly when the star of which they had spoken had appeared. His parting words to them are, “Go and search diligently for the child,” and then, I can go and worship him.
We know better than to fall for this trap. I imagine the magi did, too, even before the dream. And we know how the story ends. For all Herod’s diligence, he will not encounter the Christ child. We would be fooling ourselves to imagine that, had the magi bothered to report back to him, he himself would have done the dirty work he intended. The best laid plans, it seems, are often foiled. The most diligent are sometimes the most cowardly.
And yet, we would also be fooling ourselves to think that the magi were not diligent at all. The way the brief Gospel account relays the story, the magi suddenly pop on the scene in Jerusalem and get pulled along to Bethlehem by Herod’s own diligent quest to eradicate any potential threat to his power. It would seem that every step they take is based on a random whim.
But I find this hard to believe. Do you ever wonder what made them leave their distant home in the first place to follow a star? Can you even begin to imagine how difficult the journey would have been? If T.S. Eliot’s poetic reflection is any indication of the magi’s journey, “it was the worst time of the year for a journey.” The camels themselves were recalcitrant, people along the way were difficult, and the final destination was “(you may say) satisfactory.”[1]
The magi must have been pulled along, away from their comfortable home, by something mysterious, some magnetic gravitation towards light and truth about which they could only dream. And their long quest to reach that mystery was driven by their own diligence to follow a star, not the manipulations of Herod.
The magi’s diligence is so different from that of Herod. Diligence, or industria, Church tradition tells us, is a virtue. Its opposite is sloth. Neither the magi nor Herod exemplify sloth, but their respective degrees of diligence could not be more different.
Herod’s diligence is obsessive and distorted by evil intent. The magi’s diligence is a compelling propulsion towards a mystery they don’t fully understand but towards which they must go nonetheless. Herod’s diligence devolves into mania when details are lacking and plans are obstructed. The magi’s diligence follows a zigzagging journey in spite of the uncertain terrain and unexpected waylays. Herod’s diligence ends in a brick wall of frustration and madness. The magi’s diligent pursuit of the Christ child ends in worship and then in a journey home, changed forever.
As is the case with any virtue, the essence lies in the middle place, neither too much nor too little. Diligence in our own day is rarely considered a bad thing, but it can so easily go off the rails. We are so often the victims of diligence gone awry, leading to compulsive working, obsessive buying, and laser-focused pursuit of our own goals. At this very moment, in this nation, we are witnessing the result of a diligent bent towards violence, hatred, and division. It is destructive and wrong. It is misguided and full of darkness. It has led to evil.
2020 has burst our bubble of routine and order. 2020 has led us down unexpected paths and, in the midst of the horror, hopefully revealed blessings and grace that have always been among us.
And yet the decision still remains: do we resist guidance, or do we part with control and go deeper into mystery? Could we in this new year, learn a lesson from the magi? And which star will we follow?
For there is a star in our lives that has been guiding us all along. It has been present since before our birth, our North Star towards which we have been drawn. It took us years to become aware of the presence of this magnetic force, but it has always been among us, coaxing us towards love, light, and truth. We are still learning how to follow it.
We have felt the pull of this star. The yearning stirring in our hearts for something beyond the mundane, the irresistible pull towards beauty and mystery, the attraction of peace and unity, the frustrations that remind us to expand beyond our narrow lives and embrace the aid of another.
And at some point, we realize that even the star itself is not the end of our quest. Sometimes, the star disappears for a bit. Like the magi, we find ourselves face to face with deceit and evil, with violence as we’ve seen today. And the star hides for a bit, to preserve the beautiful path forward. And then sent away from the presence of moral darkness, the star reappears, gently leading us to some unknown destination.
Finally, it stops and hovers where we are to be. We find a place, unsatisfactory though it may be, and we get down on our knees, worship, and adore. We bring out the treasures of ourselves. We offer all that we have and are, knowing that it is insufficient and unnecessary to the recipient. But we give because that’s the only thing we can do. And we worship and adore. It is what we are meant to do.
And we, too, like the magi, are changed forever. We cannot return home by the same road. Our vision is different. We have seen another light and another truth; we have seen the only Light and Truth there is.
The only thing that stands in the way of this exotic, meandering, but beautiful journey is the wrong kind of diligence. We must choose our allegiance. We can choose devotion to people and institutions that demand a warped, callous diligence, which sees us as mere pawns for immoral purposes. Or we can offer worship to God, whom we diligently seek out of love, and who gives us freedom and invites us into a blessed life. We must start with diligence in our heart, an unwavering and irresistible desire to find the Christ child. And then we let go of our control and let God take the reins.
But if we refuse to let go, if we are so bent on our pursuit of our goals, of knowing all the details, of knowing the times and places and geographical coordinates, we will miss Jesus himself.
Between 2020 and the magi, we could learn a few lessons. Diligence is not such a bad thing, but look up once in a while, survey the stars. We have a choice of whom to follow. But let our true guiding star beckon us to a wild and fantastic journey. Just know that, no matter how diligent your intent is, when you find Jesus in that lowly stable, you will be changed forever.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Feast of the Epiphany
January 6, 2021
[1] “Journey of the Magi”