"One of the names given to this feast...is 'The Feast of the Three Kings'. Untheological and unhistorical this cherished name for the feast may be, because the Wise Men at the crib neither constitute the subject matter of the feast, nor were they kings, nor were there, for sure, even three of them; yet the name 'Three Kings' points out a significant aspect of the feast's mystery: that the first people on earth searched everywhere for the child who would redeem them, roving like pilgrims, journeying from afar through every kind of danger. So this day is the feast day of all those who seek God through their life's pilgrimage, the journey of those who find God because they seek God...
...We know very well that God is the goal of our pilgrimage. God dwells in the remote distance. The way to God seems to us all too far and all too hard. And what we ourselves mean when we say 'God' is incomprehensible. The free spirit finds only what it looks for. But God has promised in his word that he lets himself be found by those who seek him. In grace he wills to be not merely the one who is always a little farther beyond every place that the creature on pilgrimage has reached, but rather to be that one who really can be found, eye to eye, heart to heart, by those small creatures with an eternal heart that we call human beings."
(Fr. Karl Rahner, The Eternal Year, 1964)
No comments:
Post a Comment