Three turbaned men mounted on camels and draped in amber cloaks, their faces grave and determined, ride into the foreground of French painter James Tissot’s arresting depiction of the Magi. Behind them, a train of camels dwindles into the distance, flanked by the desert’s arid, monochrome hills.
The painting aptly illustrates the challenge and promise of Christmas. It depicts not the Magi’s arrival but their journey. And Christmas is just as much about journey as arrival. The Babe has journeyed, so to speak, from the ineffable heights of the divinity to the manger of our humanity. In that manger, He begins a journey of 30 years that will end in the Cross. And from that manger, He invites each of us to a lifelong journey toward the God who awaits us — not just in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, or in eternity whenever we reach it, but at this very moment in the Eucharist and in our own hearts through grace.
Just as the Magi’s journey took them through desert regions, so will ours. It was only by self-emptying that Christ assumed our humanity, and by suffering that He attained the glory of the Resurrection, and so we, too, must expect trials and die to self in order truly to live.
Just as the Magi’s journey took them through desert regions, so will ours. It was only by self-emptying that Christ assumed our humanity, and by suffering that He attained the glory of the Resurrection, and so we, too, must expect trials and die to self in order truly to live.
But more striking even than the barrenness of the lands from which the Magi emerge is their singleness of purpose, their eagerness to reach the One Thing. The hills, and the train of camels clop-clopping behind, converge on them, like a force urging them onward, but they stand slightly right of center: their destination is not the spot they now occupy but rather the only One who is the center of all things.
This is the journey each of us makes. It is the journey of Martha toward the “one thing necessary” that her sister Mary has found (Lk 10:42). It is the journey of the man who unearths the priceless pearl and joyously sells all to buy that field (Matt 13:46). It is a conversion within oneself toward God, gradually bringing everything within us into revolution around Him who is the single axis of the universe. This means that through prayer, sacrifice, the sacraments, and a life of virtue, each moment and each action of our lives comes to be determined by Christ, our Beloved.
Tissot himself experienced the joy of this conversion. After decades of worldly living, he lost his mistress to tuberculosis and, during Mass one day, experienced a vision of Christ, scourged, chained, and crowned with thorns, comforting a poor couple sitting in the rubble of a building. Tissot renounced his sensual lifestyle and traveled to Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, sketching as he went, praying, and searching for that Christ.
The Babe lying in every Nativity scene around the world teaches us that He also searches for us. I am His lost sheep, His lost coin (Matt 18:12, Lk 15:8), over whose conversion — little conversions each day — the angels in heaven rejoice.
Sr. Maria Vertias Marks is a member of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.
