Even today there are the magi. This is demonstrated by the millions of pilgrims who have crossed the Holy Door, who have set out to follow the light of Jesus. Pope Leo concludes the Jubilee with the closing rite of the Holy Door of St. Peter and then, in the homily, asks what this holy year has left us. «Let’s ask ourselves», he says, «Has the Jubilee educated us to escape that type of efficiency that reduces everything to a product and the human being to a consumer? After this year, will we be more capable of recognizing the visitor as a pilgrim, the stranger as a seeker, the distant as a neighbor, the different as a traveling companion?”. AND he denounces «a distorted economy» which, «around us», «tries to profit from everything. We see it: the market also transforms the human thirst to search, to travel, to start again into business.”
On the day of the Epiphany it recalls the joy of the Magi, but also the turmoil of Herod who fears losing his power. And that of Jerusalem itself. «Whenever it comes to the manifestations of God, Sacred Scripture does not hide this type of contrasts: joy and disturbance, resistance and obedience, fear and desire. Today we celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord, aware that in his presence nothing remains as before. This is the beginning of hope. God reveals himself and nothing can stand still. A certain type of tranquility ends, the one that makes melancholic people repeat: “There is nothing new under the sun”. Something begins on which the present and the future depend.” And it is Jerusalem itself that is troubled, «a city witness to many new beginnings. Inside, those who study the Scriptures and think they have all the answers seem to have lost the ability to ask questions and cultivate desires. Indeed, the city is frightened by those who come to it from afar, moved by hope, to the point of sensing a threat in what should on the contrary give it much joy.” A reaction that also challenges us today. «The Holy Door of this Basilica, which was the last to be closed today, has seen the flow of countless men and women, pilgrims of hope, on their way towards the City with always open doors, the new Jerusalem. Who were they and what moved them? At the end of the Jubilee Year, we are asked with particular seriousness about the spiritual research of our contemporaries, which is much richer than perhaps we can understand. Millions of them have crossed the threshold of the Church. What did they find? Which hearts, which attention, which correspondence? Yes, the Magi still exist. They are people who accept the challenge of risking their own journey, who in a troubled world like ours, in many respects repelling and dangerous, feel the need to go, to search.”
There is no need to fear this dynamism. Indeed, says the Pope, we must ask ourselves if we too are dynamic, if our Church is alive, if we love and proclaim a God who puts us back on the path. «God», recalls the Pope, «questions the existing order: he has dreams that he inspires in his prophets even today; he is determined to redeem us from ancient and new slavery; he involves young and old, poor and rich, men and women, saints and sinners in his works of mercy, in the wonders of his justice. He makes no noise, but his Kingdom is already sprouting everywhere in the world. How many epiphanies have been given to us or are about to be given to us! However, they must be removed from Herod’s intentions, from fears always ready to transform into aggression.”
Talk about today’s conflicts. “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent have taken it.” An expression, used from the Gospel of Matthew that «cannot help but make us think of the many conflicts with which men can resist and even attack the New that God has in store for everyone. Loving peace, seeking peace, means protecting what is holy and for this very reason it is nascent: small, delicate, fragile like a child”. The “Child whom the Magi adore is a Good without price and without measure. It is the Epiphany of gratuitousness. It does not await us in prestigious “locations”, but in humble realities”. Like Bethlehem. Because «his ways are not our ways, and the violent cannot dominate them, nor can the powers of the world block them. Hence the great joy of the Magi who leave the palace and the temple behind them and go out towards Bethlehem: it is then that they see the star again!
And if we «we will not reduce our churches to monuments, if our communities are homes, if we unitedly resist the blandishments of the powerful, then we will be the generation of the dawn. Mary, Morning Star, will always walk before us! In his Son we will contemplate and serve a magnificent humanity, transformed not by delusions of omnipotence, but by the God who became flesh out of love.”
