Star of Bethlehem...

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined …

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. 
~ Isaiah 9: 1-6

Continued from last week…

Myth or history? A tall tale, or indeed a journey of reality paying homage to an obscure birth in a wretched town, during a not very pleasant passage in history, over 2,000 years in our past?

We do not know. We cannot know. As it is in so much else that we ignore, it is not given to us to know.

Like all our other celebrated sciences since those far away days, ‘we three kings’ looked to astrology to give them hints about the future, about what they should do, what they should expect, what they should become. They looked to their science then, as many look to their science now, to remove their doubt.

The new sciences, you see, are much, much more about ‘Reality’ than the old sciences. They will never be tossed aside as so many playthings of mankind’s youth. The authority of our astronomy, our biology, our physics, our chemistry and others is, we fervently believe, as certain as the pole star.

Unlike astrology and alchemy, they will never be questioned; they will be built upon the journey of the Magi in fulfilling their divine mandate and duty of obeisance to a Higher Authority.

It is a central tenet of our faith in science that the new will encompass the old in one endless and eternal conservation of sense and sensibility. In this cathedral we worship a database. We can see outward to the edge of what is, and downward into time as it was, to (almost) the moment of Creation.

We can see inward into (almost) the mute heart of matter. We have the proven method. We have the hard evidence. We know that nothing is, in time, beyond our knowing. All doubt has been removed. We are the Alpha and Omega.

Our science is now as eternal and as deeply grounded in truth as … well, as astrology was to the journey of the kings in 5 B.C.

Back in 2004 Time and Newsweek, endeavored, in their ham-fisted way, to gin up some circulation with articles that purported to ‘examine’ the miracles surrounding the intersection of the divine with a world now buried two millennia deep in the ash of the Earth.

We shall probably see the same sort of thing yet again this year. The cheapening of the spirit in this culture, ‘the expense of reason in a waste of shame,’ by those whose lamp of the soul burns low, is now as predicable as the winter solstice.

Or as faithful as the journey of the Magi.

Questions were raised regarding the Virginity of Mary, the mother of Christ – a scurrilous bit of work; a ‘hit piece’ on Mary, in the jargon of the magazine trade.

For all their preening, the articles were just two chunks of thinly veiled anti-Christian porn, sops to secular hedonists in search of a cheap thrill by imbibing another hit of their favorite pap. The kinds of magazine articles always assured to strike a chord of sadness within the heart, a curious kind of self-damnation in life, and, as a result, a waste of life.

Beneath all the buffed prose and appeals to experts and phoned-in quotes from scholars, the articles rose to little more than the coarse chortling of fraternity boys in the early drunken hours of the morning: “A virgin? Right! Sure. Any wife’d tell her husband that if she suddenly began…”

It is way more interesting and worthwhile to ponder, instead, those ancient ancestors who had no doubts that what they had seen in the heavens was unusual enough to travel and fulfill a journey of dedication and respect.

It might even do double duty if you could use a star in an area that might need a few more heavy elements across the next brief one or two billion years of your plan.

To see something special. To see something beyond yourself and your imaginings. To follow it wherever it leads. To always remain prepared for miracle.

That is the inner music of the story of The Star. Like all stories that survive, it is the music of the heart and not of the head, and like the heart, it will endure.

The journey of a lifetime.

To be continued…

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. ~ Isaiah 9: 7-8

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See also Part One: Journey of the Magi eternal glory

And Elizabeth Scalia: Incarnation: The Mystery IS the Gift

H/T Gerard Vanderleun and his wonderful ‘Star of Bethlehem’ from 2008 in American Digest

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Face of Jesus by Richard Hook

Soli Deo Gloria!