WordPress is offering some help with getting back (or on) the blogging wagon. I’ve let this one slide entirely too much in the past year or so.
I decided to go with the “postaweek” rather than the “postaday” on this blog. Gotta “sneak up on it!”
For we Russian Orthodox, this is one of the two weeks between the Nativity of Christ (celebrated on the old Julian Calendar on Jan 6th – but more on that another time) and the Theophany (or “Showing Forth”) of Christ.
So, today, I will post from St. John Chrysostom (the “Golden Mouth”) in the 4th century after Christ.
Visit of the Magi:
What do the wise men learn from the star? …That He was King of the Jews? And yet He was not king of this kingdom, even as He also said to Pilate, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ …And even if they knew Him to be a king, for what intent did they come? …What had astrology to do with Him? …What reason induce them to worship one who was king so far off … not yet grown to manhood? Why do they set forth on so long a journey and offer gifts and this when dangers were sure to beset their whole proceedings? …God called them by the things that are familiar …and he shows a large and extraordinary star, so as to astonish them …Yet for all that, God, for the salvation of those who are in error, endured to be served by these things whereby those without were used to serve devils (astrology); only He slightly altered them; that He might draw them off by degrees from their customs, and lead them towards the higher wisdom. [St. John Chrysostom. Homily VI on Matthew 2:1,4.]
