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Sunday, January 3rd was the feast of the Epiphany. This is the event that features the Three Kings. (Originally, I think they were called the Four Seasons. But when Frankie Valli left to start a solo career, the other guys decided to rename the group. I could be wrong about that, though.)
If you remember from watching any Christmas pageant during the past 2,000 years, the Three Kings were from the East and they traversed afar to bring gifts to the newborn baby Jesus: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. On the night Jesus was born, the Three Kings arrived at the stable about ten seconds after the shepherds. Well, at least that’s the way it’s done during most Christmas pageants.
The Bible, however, tells the story a little differently. Matthew’s gospel does not call them kings. They are described as Magi, a word which can mean mystics, magicians, priests, astrologers, college professors, diplomats, wealthy adventurers, reality show contestants, or maybe a combination of all of these. Also, Matthew never says there were three mysterious visitors. Tradition assumes there were three — probably because of the three gifts mentioned — but the Bible actually is silent about that. The Bible is not silent about other details of their journey. It says this about the visitors: “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother.”
Did you catch that? The Bible says Jesus and Mary were in a house, not a stable or barn or cave. When you consider the fact that evil King Herod ordered the murder of all Bethlehem boys two years old and younger — not just newborn babies — many Scripture scholars suggest the Magi visited Jesus when He was a toddler, between one and two years old.
At Mass this coming Sunday, January 10th, it is the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. This is the event when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, the official beginning of the Lord’s earthly ministry.
Wait a minute. At Mass on the 3rd, Jesus is no more than 2 years old. Then, seven days later at Mass, Jesus is 30 years old. Wow, He aged at least 28 years in one week. What gives? Why do we skip over such a large portion of Jesus’ life?
The answer is rather simple: we skip over such a large portion of Jesus’ life because the Bible skips over it. Information about Jesus’ birth, what we call the Nativity stories, is found in the first two chapters of both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. (This means the other two gospels, Mark and John, don’t even mention Jesus’ birth.) After these four chapters, the story immediately picks up with Jesus as an adult, ready to start His ministry.
There is one small section of Luke, chapter 2, that describes the time when Jesus was 12 years old and got lost in Jerusalem for three days. But that’s it. Out of 89 chapters in the four gospels, there are four chapters about Jesus’ birth, a handful of verses about one incident when He was 12, and everything else in the remaining 85 chapters discusses His adult ministry.
Another reason we jump from Jesus’ infancy to the start of His ministry so quickly is the fact we have to squeeze the whole story of salvation history into a 12-month Liturgical timeframe.
Each Liturgical year begins with Advent. The Mass cycles cover that season and then Christmas. Then there’s a short period of Ordinary Time until Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. After Lent is the Easter season, which ends on Pentecost Sunday, usually in May or June. At this point, the Church calendar moves back into Ordinary Time for many months until the next Advent and a new Liturgical year.
Even though there are 12 months, it is a daunting task to include all the important feast days and all the key episodes in Jesus’ life. If the Church had to include many events from Jesus’ childhood, it would be impossible to cover everything. So, that’s probably why, after four brief chapters about the Nativity, the Bible jumps right into Jesus’ adult ministry.
St. John said it best at the end of his gospel, when he explained that if every single thing Jesus did was written down, “I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”
Please don’t be concerned if it seems like Jesus aged 28 years in one week. There are many, many things that had to be left out of the Scriptures. But all those mysterious gaps in the story sure give us a lot to think about!
Bill Dunn returned to the Catholic Church many years ago after losing his faith in atheism. He works as a freelance writer and his humor column appears weekly in the Republican-American newspaper in Waterbury, CT. Bill posts a faith essay called “The Merry Catholic” each week on his website and can be heard on WJMJ, the radio station for the Hartford Archdiocese. He also lectors in his parish, sings (if that’s what you want to call it) in the church choir, and leads two different parish Bible study groups. Bill has published the following books: Boomer Trek: One Baby Boomer’s Surprising Journey from Secular Humanism to Faith in God, A Matter of Laugh or Death, Purge the Evil, and The Gospel According to Morty. Bill and his wife Joyce are empty-nesters in Torrington, CT. His websites are www.boomertrek.com and www.merrycatholic.com.
