I thought I was finished with the feast of the Epiphany for this year. Then I read the text of Pope Francis’ homily on the feast.

I would be surprised if some of his words did not speak to your inner seeker.

The Magi looked beyond their horizons

… the Magi were “men with a restless heart…  not satisfied with their secure income and their respectable place in society…  They were seekers after God.

…They were not content to plod through life but yearned for new and greater horizons.  Their eyes were not fixed here below; they were windows open to the heavens.

The Magi were filled with desire.

To desire means to fuel the fire that burns within us; it drives us to look beyond what is immediate and visible. 

… For that is the way God made us: brimming with desire, directed, like the Magi, towards the stars.

… or it is our desires that enlarge our gaze and drive our lives forward, beyond the barriers of habit, beyond banal consumerism, beyond a drab and dreary faith, beyond the fear of becoming involved and serving others and the common good. 

A “Parking lot of life”

…Sometimes we live in a spirit of a “parking lot”; we stay parked, without the impulse of desire that carries us forward. 

… We do well to ask: where are we on our journey of faith? 

… Have we been stuck all too long, nestled inside a conventional, external and formal religiosity that no longer warms our hearts and changes our lives? 

The Magi “school of desire”

… Let us go to the Magi and learn from their “school of desire”.  They will teach us.  Let us look at the steps they took and draw some lessons from them.

… In the first place, they set out at the rising of the star. 

….The Magi teach us that we need to set out anew each day, in life as in faith, for faith is not a suit of armour that encases us; instead, it is a fascinating journey, a constant and restless movement, ever in search of God, always discerning our way forward.

…Then, in Jerusalem the Magi ask questions: they inquire where the Child is to be found.  They teach us that we need to question. 

… We must learn this well: God addresses us more with questions than with answers. 

… We need to entertain questions.

… The Magi then defy Herod. 

… They teach us that we need a courageous faith, one that is unafraid to challenge the sinister logic of power, and become seeds of justice and fraternity in societies where in our day modern Herods continue to sow death and slaughter the poor and innocent, amid general indifference.

… Finally, the Magi return “by another way” (Mt 2:12). 

… They challenge us to take new paths.  Here we see the creativity of the Spirit who always brings out new things. 

… At the end of the Magi’s journey …they worshiped. 

… Let us never forget this: the journey of faith finds renewed strength and fulfillment only when it is made in the presence of God. 

… Only if we recover our “taste” for adoration will our desire be rekindled. 

… Desire leads us to adoration and adoration renews our desire.

… Like the Magi, let us lift up our eyes, listen to the desire lodged in our hearts, and follow the star that God makes shine above us. 

… As restless seekers, let us remain open to God’s surprises. 

… Brothers and sisters, let us dream, let us seek and let us adore.

Click below for an audio version of this Vincentian Mindwalk