Letter of January 13, 2006

‘WE HAVE COME TO WORSHIP HIM’
The Most Reverend Carl F. Mengeling, Bishop of Lansing

The birth of our Savior, welcomed by Mary and Joseph and the Shepherds on Christmas is made complete on the Epiphany. Then we celebrate the welcome of the Messiah by the Magi who represent the rest of mankind.

The Magi, their journey and their encounter with the child Jesus was the centerpiece of the 20th World Youth Day. It was attended by over a million youth from August 18-21 in Cologne, Germany.

In his many homilies and addresses then, Pope Benedict always centered on the Epiphany event. A fine preparation for this Solemnity on January 8th is to listen to Our Holy Father.

Here are some highlights from last August:

Arrival at Cologne Airport on August 18: "We have come to worship him", is the theme that John Paul II chose for the 20th World Youth Day. These words were spoken by the Magi Kings, who set out on their journey following the star in order to kneel before the Savior. It is a "stirring" theme that "provokes" and "challenges". It is quite clear: young people decide to meet in Cologne, together with the Pope, to worship Christ.

The words of the Three Magi enable youth from every continent to undertake, in spirit but also in practice, a journey of conversion and hope. Together, these young people will live the experience of adoration and prayer. Adoration of the true God is a genuine act of resistance to every form of idolatry. Adoring Christ: he is the Rock on which to build the future of a world with greater justice and solidarity.

On August 18, Pope Benedict visited Cologne Cathedral, begun in 1248: "You should know that in 1164 the relics of the Magi were escorted by the Archbishop of Cologne, Reinald von Dassel, from Milan, across the Alps, all the way to Cologne, where they were received with great jubilation.

In honor of the Magi the inhabitants of Cologne produced the most exquisite reliquary of the whole Christian world and raised above it an even greater reliquary: Cologne, Cathedral. Along with Jerusalem the "Holy City", Rome the "Eternal City" and Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Cologne, thanks to the Magi, has become down the centuries one of the most important places of pilgrimage in the Christian West.

Highlights from the Pope’s homily to over one million at conclusion of World Youth Day.

Dear young friends,

In our pilgrimage with the mysterious Magi from the East, we have arrived at the moment which St. Matthew describes "Going into the house (over which the star had halted), they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him". Outwardly, their journey was now over. They had reached their goal.

But at this point a new journey began for them, an inner pilgrimage which changed their whole lives. Their mental picture of the infant King they were expecting to find must have been very different.

The new King, to whom they now paid homage, was quite unlike what they were expecting. In this way they had to learn that God is not as we usually imagine him to be. This was where their inner journey began. It started at the very moment when they knelt down before this child and recognized him as the promised King. But they still had to assimilate these joyful gestures internally.

They had to change their ideas about power, about God and about man, and in so doing, they also had to change themselves. Now they were able to see that God’s power is not like that of the powerful of this world. God’s ways are not as we imagine them or as we might wish them to be.

God is different - this is what they now come to realize. And it means that they themselves must now become different, they must learn God’s ways.

They had come to place themselves at the service of this King, to model their own kingship on his. That was the meaning of their act of homage, their adoration. Included in this were their gifts - gold, frankincense and myrrh - gifts offered to a King held to be divine. Adoration has a content and it involves giving. Through this act of adoration, these men from the East wished to recognize the child as their King and to place their own power and potential at his disposal, and in this they were certainly on the right path.

Now they have to learn to give themselves - no lesser gift would be sufficient for this King. Now they have to learn that their lives must be conformed to this divine way of exercising power, to God’s own way of being.

They must become men of truth, of justice, of goodness, of forgiveness, of mercy. They will no longer ask: how can this serve me? Instead, they will have to ask: How can I serve God’s presence in the world? They must learn to lose their life and in this way to find it. Having left Jerusalem behind, they must not deviate from the path marked out by the true King, as they follow Jesus.

Here in Cologne we discover the joy of belonging to a family as vast as the world, including Heaven and earth, the past, the present, the future and every part of the earth. In this great band of pilgrims we walk side by side with Christ, we walk with the star that enlightens our history.

"Going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him". Dear friends, this is not a distant story that took place long ago. It is with us now. Here in the Sacred Host he is present before us and in our midst. As at that time, so now he is mysteriously veiled in a sacred silence; as at that time, it is here that the true face of God is revealed. For us he became a grain of wheat that falls on the ground and dies and bears fruit until the end of the world.

He is present now as he was then in Bethlehem. He invites us to that inner pilgrimage which is called adoration. Let us set off on this pilgrimage of the spirit and let us ask him to be our guide. Amen."