Sunday Gospel Reflection (Jan 5, 2025)

Dividing Sight, Uniting Light

There is no greater faculty within the human person, and most animals, for the act of division than the sense of sight. This is not an entirely negative thing as it is the primary means we can know one thing from another. We divide them in our mind. This capacity for division can obviously be corrupted to divide things that should be united, namely people. We find this in the very creation of light itself, that by which we can see at all, as it is divided immediately after its creation in Genesis 1. 

Paradoxically, the Catholic Church also describes the experience of heaven itself, the experience of the purely simple God, as the Beatific Vision. Our greatest union, another paradox, with Unity Itself, is precipitated on the thing that allows us to distinguish, divide. Until the general resurrection, when our souls will reunite with our bodies after their separation in death, this vision will not be literal as we will not have eyes yet, but the fact that sight is used implies the same principle of division will be present. I would argue that the way to make sense of this paradox is found in the Epiphany, the making visible of that which brings all of reality together.

The simplest application of this is found in the details of the story itself. The most visible element is something that has been most visible to all humans for all of human history, a star. Ironically, it is the ability and practice of dividing one star from all the others, astronomy, that gave the Magi the understanding of its unique importance. It was also the star that, though divided, brought the Magi into closer physical contact, union, with the source of the phenomenon. 

This union in sight is realized in the recognition of the significance of the celebration of the Epiphany, which remembers the visit of the Magi, because it marks the union of Gentiles into the covenant of Israel. It is in this vision that the arbitrary human divisions are overcome. With the ushering in and worship by the Magi, the gates of heaven, through the covenant established with Abraham, are opened. Of course, this gate was opened from the inside. Fittingly, who else but the ones called the “gate of heaven” (Gen 28:17), first by nature in Jesus and by grace in Mary, be the ones to open it.