Come the Wise Men

At this time of year, the Gentiles are called into the fold of the saved,
enemies become friends. A familiar story brings out this theme of
reconciliation.

On Christmas Eve in 1914, the first year of World War I, a strange quiet had
settled on the western front. It was a welcome respite for a group of lonely
English soldiers who had become all too familiar with the roar of the
cannons and the whine of the rifles. As they reclined in their trenches

each man began to speculate about the activities of loved ones back home.

"My parents are just finished a toast to my health," a lad from Liverpool

said slowly.

"I can almost hear the church bells," a stout man from Ely said wistfully.
"My whole family will soon be walking out the door to hear the concert of
the boy's choir at the cathedral.

The men sat silent for several minutes before a thin soldier from Kent
looked up with tears in his eyes. "This is eerie," he stammered, "but I can
almost the choir singing."

So can I," shouted another puzzled voice. "I think there is music coming
from the other side."

All the men scrambled to the edge of trench and cocked their ears. What they
heard was a few sturdy German voices singing Martin Luther's Christmas song,
"From heav'n above to earth I come, to bear good news to every one. Glad
tidings of great joy I bring to all the world, and gladly sing."

When the hymn was finished, the English soldiers sat frozen in silence. Then
a large man with a powerful voice broke into the chorus of "God rest ye,
merry, gentlemen." Before he had sung three bars a dozen voices joined with
him. By the time he finished the entire regiment was singing.

Once again there was an interlude of silence until a German tenor began to
sing "Stille Nacht." This time the song was sung in two languages, a chorus
of nearly a hundred voices echoing back and forth between he trenches,
"Silent night, holy night! All is calm, all is bright."

"Someone is approaching!" a sentry shouted, and attention was focused on a
single German soldier who walked slowly, waving a white cloth with one hand
and holding several bars of chocolate in the other. Slowly, men from both
sides eased out into the neutral zone and began to greet one another. In the
next golden moments each soldier shared what he had with the others, candy,
cigarettes and even a bit of Christmas brandy.

Most important, the soldiers showed the battered, but treasured pictures
they carried of loved ones.

No one knows whose idea it was to start the football game, but with the help
of flares the field was lit and the British and German soldiers played until
they and the lights were exhausted. Then, as quietly as they came together,
the men returned to their own trenches.

On Christmas day, men from both sides again joined together, even visiting
the other's trenches. The German soldiers, wishing to avenge the previous
night's torch-lit football loss, organized another game of what Americans
call soccer.

In a few days the cannons once again boomed across "no-man's land" and the
whines of rifles was again heard in the trenches. For some, however, it was
never the same. The enemy was no longer faceless. Now he was an acquaintance
who shared a candy bar or played soccer. When men looked down the barrels of
their guns at the opposition they also saw the smiling faces of those whose
pictures were shared on a silent, holy night when the birth of the Christ
child drew hostile forces together as brothers, and for a few moments, gave
weary soldiers a taste of peace and good will.

This story reminds us that the Magi, the three Wise Men who came from the
East to adore the child-king, Jesus, were Gentiles, foreigners. They were
entering into unknown, perhaps hostile territory in coming to the land of
the Israelites. But they came because the stars they studied nightly
contained one exceptional star that pointed them to the baby Jesus. And they
came bringing gifts. They came to worship a child.

The little children are today's young. Unfortunately, all too many of them
are heirs of the innocents in Bethlehem, whom Herod slew because anyone of
them might have been the child Jesus. These are not abstractions.

"If the well-being of its children is the proper measure of the health of a
civilization," Fortune magazine tells us, "the United States is in grave
danger."[i] One of every five children grows up in poverty. Every day more
than three children die of injuries inflicted by abusive parents. Every day
some 1.3 million-latchkey kids five to 14 return to empty homes to fend for
themselves. Every day more than 2,200 return to empty homes to fend for
themselves. Every day more than 2,200 youngsters drop out of school. Every
day over 500 children 10 to 14 begin to use illegal drugs, over a thousand
start drinking alcohol. Each day over 1,400 teenage girls, two thirds of
them unmarried, become mothers. Among 15- to 19-year olds, death by firearms
is the third-leading abuse of death for whites, the leading cause for
blacks. Forty-one percent of boys and 24 percent of girls can get a gun on a
whim.[ii] In Washington, D.C., children are preparing their own funerals -
what clothes they will wear, how they will look. Why? Because they do not
expect to live very long. Hundreds of their playmates have been done to
death by gunfire; no reason to think the living will be alive much longer.
You know, in our country you get greater tax breaks for breeding horses than
for bearing children.

Why this litany of disasters? Because we who are privileged to preach the
gospel of Jesus Christ will not preach the Epiphany if we do not preach
passionately the plight of our children. For Epiphany celebrates God
manifesting, revealing, Godself in Christ to every man, woman and child. To
every child. Revealing God as a child.

.Fr. John Carr of the United States Catholic Conference tells this story. A
puzzled Catholic asked, "Why do we engage in all this action for the poor,
the disadvantaged, the marginalized? Most of them aren't even Catholic." The
response from Cardinal James Hickey of Washington was "We do it not because
they are Catholic, but because we are Catholic."

.And Sister Mary Rose McGeady, head of Covenant House in New York, says:
"The founder of my religious order, St. Vincent de Paul, taught us that
before we can teach the poor about God we must first take care of their
bodily needs. At Covenant House, we can't tell a kid God loves her if she's
dirty, cold, hungry and sick [iii]

It was in Bethlehem, David's city, that the Jews expected great David's
greater Son to be born; it was there that they expected God's Anointed One
to come into the world. And it was so.

The picture of the stable and the manger as the birthplace of Jesus is a
picture indelibly etched in our minds; but it may well be that that picture
is not altogether correct. Justin Martyr, one of the greatest of the early
fathers, who lived about A.D. 150, and who came from the district near
Bethlehem, tells us that Jesus was born in a cave near the village of
Bethlehem; [iv] and it may well be that Justin's information is correct. The
houses in Bethlehem are built on the slope of the limestone ridge; and it is
very common for them to have a cave-like stable hollowed out in the
limestone rock below the house itself; and very likely it was in such a
cave-stable that Jesus was born.

To this day such a cave is shown in Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus and
above it the Church of the Nativity has been built. For very long that cave
has been shown as the birthplace of Jesus. It was so in the days of the
Roman Emperor, Hadrian, for Hadrian, in a deliberate attempt to desecrate
the place, erected a shrine to the heathen god Adonis above it. When the
Roman Empire became Christian, early in the fourth century, the first
Christian Emperor, Constantine, built a great church there, and that church,
much altered and often restored, still stands.

H.V. Morton tells how he visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. He
came to a great wall, and in the wall there was a door so low that he had to
stoop to enter it; and through the door, and on the other side of the wall,
there was the church. Beneath the high altar of the church is the cave, and
when the pilgrim descends into it he finds a little cavern about fourteen
yards long and four yards wide, lit by silver lamps. In the floor there is a
star, and round it a Latin inscription: Here Jesus Christ was born of the
Virgin Mary,"

When the Lord of Glory came to this earth, he was born in a cave where men
sheltered the beasts. The cave in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
may be that same cave, or it may not be. That we will never be known for
certain. But there is something beautiful in the symbolism that the church
where the cave is has a door so low that all must stoop to enter. It is
supremely fitting that every man should approach the infant Jesus upon his
knees. [v]

The Magi, those three Wise Men, came in humility, on their knees. Only in
this posture must the nations of the world come if war is ever to be done
away with, and peace become a reality. Only when we work that all the
children of the world have enough food, clothing and shelter can we say we
have truly welcomed the Christ-child, as did the three Wise Men ... in
humility and awe.

[i] Louis S. Richman, "Struggling to Save our Kids," in a Special Report in
Fortune 126, no. 3 (Aug. 10, 1992) 34-40, at 34.
[ii] Ibid., 35-36.
[iii] Walter J. Burghardt SJ, Love Is a Flame of the Lord (Mahwah NJ:
Paulist Press 1995), pg.12/
[iv] Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypho, 78, 304.
[v] William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew (Philadelphia PA: The Westminster
Press 1956 ppg 24-5.
Fr. Gerard Fuller, o.m.i., pastor
St.William's Catholic Church
P.O. Box 367
Gainesville MO 65655
Tel.: (417) 679-4804
Fax: (417) 679-2037