The Answer to Your Deepest Longing - Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, we're coming today to one of my favorite feasts, this Feast of the Epiphany. What is it about this story of the kings, the magi, the wise men that has so captivated us? I mean, for the past 20 centuries, poets and painters and sculptors and mystics have been fascinated by this story. The whole Cologne Cathedral in Germany, you know, it's sort of predicated upon the three wise men. They claim the relics of them are there. What is it? What is it? Why is this story so entrancing? Well, I think in some ways it's telling the whole spiritual life, that you could read the dynamics of the spiritual life off of the story very well. I want to just hit a couple of highlights. First, I think this story of the Magi is all about what I'll call the longing. You know, we desire all kinds of things in life, and we seek them, and we find them.

0:55 But underneath all of our particular desires and particular longings, There's this great longing, this ache of the heart, this desire for, call it what you want, fulfillment, for peace. C.S. Lewis called it joy, and he named it every particular way. This longing that's awakened in us at certain points in life, when we're aware in a kind of oblique way of what we want, but we also know we'll never be able to attain it completely. That unfulfillable longing, at least in this life, he called joy. So it doesn't mean that superficial, you know, I'm happy-clappy because something nice happened to me.

1:48 It's something weirder and deeper and stranger. It's what Augustine talked about when he said, Lord, you made us for yourself, and therefore our heart is restless till it rests in thee. See, it's permanently restless in this life. So even as we glimpse what we want, we have a sense of what the fulfillment is, we also know we're never going to get there. So think of the magi now, astrologers, astronomers, surveying the night sky, and they're looking with a scientific spirit, that's true, But in the deeper way, they're looking for God's sign, for meaning. What is God trying to communicate? Well, I just love this part of the story, and we should never let go of that. It's one of the most precious and beautiful and rare things in life. One of the many reasons I hate secularism is secularism as an ideology is trying to stamp this out, trying to convince us that there's nothing to it.

2:53 It's a holdover from the primitive side of the primitive time in the human development or something. Resist that, everybody. Resist that with all your heart, because it's what makes us really human, is this infinite longing, this deep ache of the heart, this quest for God. Don't listen to the avatars of secularism that want to suppress that.

3:25 You know, so the magi look, and they long, and they seek, and they find this enigmatic sign. You know, so the star. Well, it's the star of the newborn king. Well, yeah, I guess. I mean, it's not God in his fullness. It's an indication. It's a beautiful but same time ambiguous indication. That's what it's like, isn't it, in our quest for God, is we get signs and hints, but they follow it. And that's beautiful about them. That's beautiful. They don't suppress or deny it. They follow this indication from God. And it takes them over desert land. And as I said, all travel in the ancient world was dangerous. A hard coming we had of it.

4:20 That's T.S. Eliot's great poem begins, you know, the difficulty of the journey. And think if someone asked them, well, what are you guys looking for? Where are you going? Well, we're following a star to find a newborn king. Uh-huh. A bit like Noah building the ark, And people, what are you doing? You're building a giant ship in the middle of a desert. Well, the spiritual life is often like that, isn't it?

4:48 What are you doing? What are you talking about? Why are you living this way? I think of many years ago when I first became a priest, and you make this vow of celibacy and of obedience and to live this religious life. And there are people then and now who would say, I don't get it. I mean, what are you doing? Well, the spiritual life's kind of like that, because we're following this star, this indication, this hint that the longing will be fulfilled if we move in this direction. It's one of the dynamics of the spiritual life. Okay, so far, everything I've been talking about could be said, really, of anybody, of any spiritual seeker. Go into any bookstore and go into the spirituality section, and you'll find books about the human aspiration for God, the longing for God. And I hope you've got the sense.

5:44 I'm not against that at all. I think that's beautiful. It's one of the great things about us. But now, now, here's the Christian difference. Christianity is not just one more account Of how we're longing for this always elusive divinity The Christian difference is The one we seek Has actually all along been seeking us And in the fullness of time Has come himself in person.

6:24 And you don't hear about that in other spiritual traditions. You hear a lot about the longing, and that's terrific. A lot about the quest. Beautiful. I got to climb the holy mountain. All right, great. But the difference is the one we are seeking has, from the beginning, even more ardently been seeking us and has come in person to meet us. That's what they find. The star, that's an indicator, right? In a way, the star, see, a star can be seen by anybody all over the world, so that's evocative of the indicators of divinity. All right, all right, good. But the story's not about the star. It's about the baby. because the baby is God coming in person now to meet that deep longing of the heart so beautifully.

7:24 They were overjoyed, it says, upon seeing the child and his mother, and then they prostrated themselves and did him homage. I've said to you before, I think the master theme of the Bible, arguably, is right praise. Sin is always worshiping something other than God, right? When I make something less than God into God, trouble follows as night follows day. Take that to the bank spiritually. The Bible is trying to bring us into the stance of right praise, that we order the longing of our heart toward the answer. Well, here it is. In a way, the wise men prostrating themselves in the presence of the Christ child that's everything that's biblical revelation that's the longing meeting the answer that's right praise being demonstrated to us beautiful beautiful that's the heart of it okay but now i want to come to the gifts so the heart of the christmas story is that god the one we've been seeking comes to us as a gift. The Father sends his Son as his greatest gift into the world.

8:46 So what's the proper response when someone gives you a gift? Is you return with a gift. We become conformed to the gift that was given to us. And so the three wise men present these three famous gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They're mysterious. In one way, we understand. They were expensive things. So if you're honoring somebody, you give them something of high value. But from early on, St. Irenaeus being the first one to see this, the three gifts have a mystical, symbolic overtone. Why gold? because the one they've come to honor is king. If you were coming as an ambassador to a king, you give him the most valuable gift you have. Then as now, gold is recognized as the thing of highest value and greatest beauty.

9:44 And so the gift of gold is an acknowledgement that this baby is the king. Now, everybody, Christ must be king of our lives. That means the one who commands every aspect of me. He's the Lord Jesus. Not someone that I am mildly interested in, someone that influences me here and there. No, no, no, no. He's king or he's nothing. He's king or you've missed the point. So the first gift we should give to Christ, as the Magi did, is this acknowledgement of his lordship, his kingship over us. Okay? Now, why frankincense? Frankincense was an incense made from the gum or the resin of a tree that was found in Saudi Arabia, so it would correspond to where the Magi were from.

10:44 It was used widely in the ancient world for religious ceremonies. To this day, it is. I'm a Catholic priest, Catholic bishop. I've always loved incense. The priests in my diocese know that. I've always loved it because to me, I don't know why it is, but incense to me always raises my mind and heart to God. It signals the sacred.

11:15 Why is frankincense given to this baby? because the baby is not just a king. He is that.