Each week, a Dominican member of the Province of St. Joseph’s Preaching Advisory Board prepares this Preacher’s Sketchbook in anticipation of the upcoming Sunday Mass. The idea of the Preacher’s Sketchbook is to take quotations from the authority of the Church–the Pope, the Fathers of the Church, documents of the Councils, the saints–that can help spark ideas for the Sunday homily. Just as an artist’s sketchbook preserves ideas for later elaboration, so we hope the Preacher’s Sketchbook will provide some ideas for homiletical elaboration.

Sketchbook

Benedict XVI, Homily, January 6, 2008

The arrival in Bethlehem of the Magi from the East to adore the newborn Messiah is a sign of the manifestation of the universal King to the peoples and to all who seek the truth. It is the beginning of a movement opposed to that of Babel: from confusion to comprehension, from dispersion to reconciliation. Thus, we discern a link between Epiphany and Pentecost: if the Nativity of Christ, who is the Head, is also the Nativity of the Church, his Body, we can see the Magi as the peoples who join the remnant of Israel, foretelling the great sign of the “polyglot Church” that the Holy Spirit carried out 50 days after Easter. The faithful and tenacious love of God which is never lacking in his covenant from generation to generation is the “mystery” of which St Paul speaks in his Letters and in the passage from the Letter to the Ephesians which has just been proclaimed: the Apostle says that this mystery “was made known to me by revelation” (Ep 3,3).

Benedict XVI, Homily, January 6, 2007

How was this possible? What convinced the Magi that the Child was “the King of the Jews” and the King of the peoples? There is no doubt that they were persuaded by the sign of the star that they had seen “in its rising” and which had come to rest precisely over the place where the Child was found (cf. Mt 2,9). But even the star would not have sufficed had the Magi not been people inwardly open to the truth. In comparison with King Herod, beset with his interests of power and riches, the Magi were directed toward the goal of their quest and when they found it, although they were cultured men, they behaved like the shepherds of Bethlehem: they recognized the sign and adored the Child, offering him the precious and symbolic gifts that they had brought with them.

Thomas Aquinas, STh III, a.36,q 7

As Chrysostom says (Hom. ii in Matth. [*From the supposititious Opus Imperfectum]): “If the Magi had come in search of an earthly King, they would have been disconcerted at finding that they had taken the trouble to come such a long way for nothing. Consequently they would have neither adored nor offered gifts. But since they sought a heavenly King, though they found in Him no signs of royal pre-eminence, yet, content with the testimony of the star alone, they adored: for they saw a man, and they acknowledged a God.” Moreover, they offer gifts in keeping with Christ’s greatness: “gold, as to the great King; they offer up incense as to God, because it is used in the Divine Sacrifice; and myrrh, which is used in embalming the bodies of the dead, is offered as to Him who is to die for the salvation of all” (Gregory, Hom. x in Evang.). And hereby, as Gregory says (Hom. x in Evang.), we are taught to offer gold, “which signifies wisdom, to the new-born King, by the luster of our wisdom in His sight.” We offer God incense, “which signifies fervor in prayer, if our constant prayers mount up to God with an odor of sweetness”; and we offer myrrh, “which signifies mortification of the flesh, if we mortify the ill-deeds of the flesh by refraining from them.”

John Paul II, Catechesi tradendae, 60

When educating children, adolescents and young people, let us not give them too negative an idea of faith – as if it were absolute non-knowing, a kind of blindness, a world of darkness – but let us show them that the humble yet courageous seeking of the believer, far from having its starting point in nothingness, in plain self-deception, in fallible opinions or in uncertainty, is based on the Word of God who cannot deceive or be deceived, and is unceasingly built on the immovable rock of this Word. It is the search of the Magi under the guidance of a star, the search of which Pascal, taking up a phrase of St. Augustine, wrote so profoundly: “You would not be searching for me, if you had not found me.”