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Today's Gospel
Check Your Power
6 min
Gospel
Mt 2:1-12
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it is written by the prophet:
‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who will govern my people Israel.’”
Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star appeared; and he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” When they had heard the king they went their way; and lo, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy; and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
Readings are from Dynamic Catholic’s New Testament Bible: RSV Catholic Edition
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Transcript
Check Your Power
Is there a word or a phrase or an idea that jumps out at you today? I think very often we read these stories and there's people we easily associate with and people we don't easily associate with and we probably don't that easily associate with Herod. But what happens here is the Wise Men show up and they say, basically, "A new king has been born, and we're here to worship him." So what happens? Herod feels threatened. His power feels threatened, or he has a fear of his power seeping away. And we all have power. We all have different little fiefdoms in our world, and little bits of power that we've got, and that power gets threatened all the time by different people, by different situations, some of them real, many of them imagined. The question is, how do you exercise your power? How do I exercise my power? And do we exercise it as custodians? Or foolishly and arrogantly thinking or believing that it's ours by something we've done of ourselves or on our own or that sort of thing. Rubbish, really. We all see people abuse power, right? We see people given a little bit of power, maybe in this situation, they've got this little bit of power, and we see it abused. We see them just abusing. They've got the tiniest little bit of power, and they're abusing that tiny little bit of power. We see that all the time. And we feel an injustice in that. But do we ever stop and consider, okay, what power do I actually have? Am I exercising it as a custodian, as a steward? Am I exercising it humbly, thoughtfully, or am I being careless or even reckless with the power that has been given to me? That was the first thing that jumped out at me.
And then, of course, the wise men. They go and search diligently. That's what we're told. They go and search diligently for the child, for Jesus. Do you go and search diligently for Jesus? Do we wake up each day and go and search diligently for Jesus? Some days I do, but most days I don't, right? I'm distracted by things I have to get focused in. That's what the wise men did. But again, most days, in a sense, I'm like Herod. I'm like, "All right, guys, you go find him. You do all the hard work. Do the diligent and searching. Come and let me know where He is, and then I'll show up." Now, obviously, I'm not showing up for the same reasons as here it is, hopefully, but there can be a laziness in our spirituality, right? We can lose that, "Go and search diligently." And so let's go out into the world today and search diligently for Jesus in places we wouldn't expect to find him. Because that's always where He was showing up in the gospel. Have a great day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.
