Reflection for January 4

The magi may not have been what we have thought them to be…. I rather like the notion that the magi might have been traveling entertainers, members of a class commonly accepted as fools in every sense of that word…. There is only one thing about this story that we can hold with any certainty: whoever these people were and wherever they were from, they were henceforth called “wise.” Their wisdom was not necessarily the precondition of their visitation, but it was certainly the one gift they took with them from that stable. Wisdom, then, is not the prerequisite to relationship with Jesus, but the product of knowing the Lord (Sam Portaro, Brightest and Best, “The Epiphany of Our Lord”).