Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ!
Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Epiphany popularly known as the feast of the Three Kings. Today we commemorate the coming of three wise men from the East who followed the Star that appeared and led them to where the Child Jesus was. According to tradition, they sought this new born king and paid homage to him.
 While in the Eastern Churches the Epiphany celebrates the triple manifestation of Christ, as the baby adored by the Magi, his baptism at river Jordan and the first miracle he performed at the wedding feast at Cana… true manifestations of Christ’s mission and his double nature as man and as God. Today in the Latin Church, it can be said to be one of the highlights of the Christmas celebration: Christ manifests himself to all for he is one only the Messiah of the Jews whom they have waited; but also the Savior and Redeemer of the gentiles.
 While making the reflection of today’s homily, I found myself remembering one of my favorite books and writers which helped shape my outlook in life and my ministry. He was the famous philosopher/psychiatrist Viktor Frankl and his seminal work Man’s search for meaning. I suppose some of you have read the book and if not I believe and I would like to invite you to read this book at least once in your life. Dr. Frankl was a famous Jewish doctor and psychiatrist who lived in Vienna, due to his race he was arrested by the Nazis and was sent to the concentration camp where he lost everything, his loved ones, his career and his future. Fortunately he survived and his experience in the concentration camp as well as his observations of his co –inmates led him to make some startling conclusions which differed to many thinkers, philosophers, psychologists of his time. According to his observations, when man is stripped of everything even his self worth and humanity, the one thing that would give him strength to continue and live through all trials is to seek meaning in everything. This would finally lead to a transcendent reality as the source of meaning and eventually a life force. Though this may be too simplistic to present the ideas of this great man of the past century, in contrasts to the nihilists and the existentialists of pre and post war era, Frankl believes that this search for meaning is the very life source of our existence.
 This search for meaning, the search for the truth and the search for wisdom is man’s lifetime quest. Because the possession of meaning, truth becomes the source of fulfillment and happiness for man: the motor that drives men to be.
 But what does Frankl have to do with today’s feast? The wise men from the East symbolized man’s search for meaning… these wise men sought meaning in their ancients runes and texts, they deciphered the stars and the constellations… they could not find what they were looking for except signs of manifestations of what they might be looking for… When the star appeared.. they left everything to follow where the star led them, they went beyond the normal course of their lives to find out where this star is going to lead them to… perhaps a secret they have seen looking for, perhaps the key to open doors. With so much excitement and enthusiasm from their part, when they arrived in Jerusalem, they were surprised, better they were shocked that the Jews themselves did not know the sign nor the birth of a king… the city was filled with fear, and Herod even had to ask the scribes and the scholars as to the veracity of the foreigners’ tale. Despite the incredulity and indifference of the city dwellers, they continued their journey, following the star which led them into the small town of Bethlehem of Judah.
What did they find? They did not find a boy in his royal raiment, pronouncing words of wisdom, or a pampered prince amidst the luxury and ministrations of slaves and servants. What they saw was a baby in the arms of his mother… a child so normal, so ordinary, so tiny, so vulnerable and so weak before them. It is in this baby in the arms of his mother where they found what they were looking for. It is a wisdom and truth not found in books or from the musings of great minds but it is the love that has become flesh. This baby in the arms of his mother, in the poverty of a small Bethlehem home teaching them the novel logic and paradigm of the Gospel which is love. He tells them that what they seek can only be found if one becomes like a child again, to live by finding the true meaning of our humanity which is graced by His incarnation. It is our capacity to love and to live for others.
The wise men sought and found what they were seeking, perhaps more than what they were expecting as they not only found a king, a sage but found the God of love becoming man. The light of truth that lighted their path to Bethlehem has led them to find love. That is why they were not there to speculate the “whys†or the “howsâ€, before the mystery of love they could only bend their knees to adore, to contemplate and the experience the love that is being manifested before them. Perhaps the magi also experienced what Frankl had so beautifully said:
The truth–that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. … For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, ‘The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.’
 My brothers and sisters, while men and women today continue to seek the meaning of their existence, Jesus Christ has appeared to us, to meet us in our journey and to give us the answer to what we are searching for. Today Jesus manifests in the most wonderful manner God’s way of love, through the incarnation. Through this act of becoming man, he indeed has bestowed upon us salvation and from our brokenness gave us redemption. Just as man has nothing else left except his own poverty, Christ’s coming, his birth is indeed an EVENT: a source of peace, of immeasurable joy and of hope.
 Our search is over, the light of that bright star has led us before His presence, we are invited to learn from the child Jesus the path of true holiness and Christian fraternity, the royal way of love which He has given his own life as the most eloquent example. Only by following his example of humility, of self-giving can we truly find the meaning of our lives as persons. Like him to live and to die for others. Here before the child Jesus in the arms of his mother, we too bend our knees in humility, we offer him gifts, not of gold, myrrh and frankincense, but something more valuable, something more personal, ourselves, our dreams, our projects our weaknesses and our foibles. Like the magi, we can just adore and contemplate the mystery before us… before him, logical acrobatics or philosophical musings are suspended, only the gaze of loving contemplation is enough….
 As we live in times of living dangerously, of uncertainty and seeming desolation, of hopelessness and indifference, may the star that shines in the darkness of our daily existence, —Jesus, shine a glimmer of hope for all men and women, to lead them to Himself and to experience His love as a source of true salvation and redemption. May our daily witnessing of our faith, our day to day experience of God’s abundant love for man, reflect that light leading them to Jesus and that our actions of love, of forgiveness, of solidarity with the poor and the marginalized, our committed to Gospel values enable them to experience the warmth of true Christian love. So that all of us men and women of goodwill can heed the Christmas invitation: Come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord for your birth is our peace!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Fr. Jarvis, O.P