7 facts that maybe you didn’t know about the Epiphany and the Three Wise Men

January 6 is the day on which the Catholic Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord (in certain places it moves to the nearest Sunday), to commemorate the “manifestation” of the expected Messiah, Jesus Christ, to all the peoples of humanity. . These are represented in the figure of the Three Wise Men who came from the East to Bethlehem to worship the Baby Jesus, newborn and lying in a manger.

The Gospel according to Saint Matthew says: “When they entered the house, they found the Child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and paid homage to him. Then, opening their chests, they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh” (Mt 2:11).

So that we can more easily delve into the meaning of this celebration, below we share 7 facts that perhaps you did not know about the Epiphany.

1. The Church celebrates three Epiphanies

It usually happens that when Catholics hear the word “Epiphany,” we immediately think of the “feast of the Three Wise Men” or the “Three Kings Day,” which is very natural since the word “epiphany” in Greek means “manifestation”; and that is exactly what happened at the Bethlehem portal. God manifests himself, “reveals himself,” “makes himself known,” in a special way, in a special moment: as a child, in the arms of Mary, he showed himself in his fragility to all of humanity, represented in the wise men who arrived from East who had sought him to worship him.

However, it is necessary to point out that the Church celebrates two other manifestations of Jesus as epiphanies throughout his life. In addition to the “epiphany” to the Magi from the East (manifestation to the pagan peoples), the Baptism of the Lord (manifestation to the Jewish people) and the wedding at Cana (manifestation to the disciples) are also considered epiphanies. The three epiphanies reveal Jesus in his divinity.

2. Epiphany is the second oldest holiday

Epiphany is one of the oldest celebrations of the Catholic Church, second only to Easter. Their festive origins come from the East, from where they were incorporated into the West in the 4th century.

According to certain historical sources, initially Christians commemorated the three Epiphanies on the same date. In the Eastern Church, for its part, the holiday included the birth of Christ. However, with the passage of time, the celebratory “load” of Epiphany decreased, especially after the Christianization of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, when Christmas began to be celebrated on December 25.

In the Middle Ages, the Epiphany became increasingly identified with the feast of the Three Wise Men until it acquired the meaning it has today. The Catholic Church continues to celebrate the three epiphanies, but today it does so at different times of the liturgical calendar.

3. A saint defined the date

There is a consensus that Epiphany was set on January 6 because this day commemorated the birth of Aion, patron god of the metropolis of Alexandria. Likewise, this pagan festival coincided with the celebrations of the winter solstice in Egypt. As has generally happened at the beginning of Christianity, important pagan festivals were replaced by Christian anniversaries. That seems to be the case with Epiphany.

In the 4th century, Saint Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 263-339) and Saint Jerome of Strydon (342-420) in the 4th century, agreed with Saint Epiphanius (ca. 310-403) in the difficulty of determining a precise date for the arrival of the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem, and they limited themselves to indicating a probable time range, before Jesus turned two years old.

However, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430), in his sermons on the Epiphany, maintains that the Magi arrived on the thirteenth day after the birth of the Lord. That is, January 6 according to the current calendar.

4. Kings, wise men or wise men

Saint Matthew, the only one who recounts the arrival of the Three Wise Men in Scripture, mentions their origin: “They came from the East.” “East”, for the Jews, was a term that referred to the territories of Arabia, Persia or Chaldea. On the other hand, the term “magician” did not have the meaning that we give it today.

“Magician” in the Persian language meant “priest,” and precisely the “magi” (hide in Greek) made up the caste of Babylonian priests. The magicians to whom the evangelist alludes had not accessed divine revelation like the Jews, and probably cultivated traditional knowledge in which elements that today we would perhaps call “scientific” were mixed, such as the observation and calculation of the movements of the stars. . Consequently, the “magician” was a figure closer to the “sage” of Eastern antiquity. The desire for knowledge was what moved the wise men to come into contact with the messianic tradition of the Jewish people and the desire to know God.

It was that same tradition that called the wise men or magicians “kings,” as recorded in Psalm 72:10-11, which proclaims: “The kings of the West and the islands will pay tribute to him. The kings of Arabia and Ethiopia will offer him gifts. “All kings will bow down before him and all nations will serve him.”

5. There could have been more than three

Saint Leo the Great and Saint Maximus of Turin, in the 4th and 5th centuries respectively, speak of “three wise men”, most likely in reference to the three gifts described by the evangelist. However, there are pictorial representations from the first centuries of the Christian era in which two, four, six and even eight magi appear. However, in the oldest fresco depicting the scene of the adoration of the magi, only three appear. This fresco dates from the 2nd century and is located in one of the arches of the Greek Chapel of the Roman catacombs of Priscilla.

The Three Wise Men would have accessed the prophecies about the birth of a messiah, king of the Jews, through the Jewish community of Babylon. These stories, which would have mentioned the appearance of a star as a sign of the advent of a very powerful king, would have encouraged them to observe and follow the star of Bethlehem. It is possible that the wise men felt especially motivated to undertake the journey and meet said king because his coming would mark the beginning of a new era.

in his book Jesus of NazarethPope Benedict XVI states: “We know from (Roman historians) Tacitus and Suetonius that speculation was rife at the time that the ruler of the world would emerge from Judah, an expectation that (Jewish historian) Flavius ​​Josephus applied to (the emperor Roman) Vespasian, so he found his way into the latter’s favor (cf. By Bello Judaico III, 399-408)”.

6. Their names, physiognomies and gifts

The names of the Magi do not appear in the Holy Scriptures, but tradition has assigned them some. In a manuscript found in Paris dating from the end of the 7th century they are called “Bitisarea”, “Melchior” and “Gataspa”, but from the 9th century onwards the idea that their names were Gaspar, Melchior and Baltazar was already quite widespread. .

Melchior is generally depicted as a bearded old man with white skin, like the typical men of Caucasian Europe, and it is he who offers the Child God gold, in recognition of his royalty. Gaspar, for his part, represents the inhabitant of Asia, and it is he who carries the incense, in honor of the divinity of Jesus. While Baltazar represents men from Africa, whose skin is black. He is the one who gave myrrh to the Savior, a perfume that was used to embalm corpses and that alludes to the humanity of the Lord.

The way in which the three wise men have usually been represented refers to the stages of human life: youth (Gaspar), maturity (Baltazar) and old age (Melchior).

7. The star would have been a conjunction of planets

Several hypotheses have been developed about the star of Bethlehem whose path the Three Wise Men followed. Previously it was said that it was a comet, but astronomical studies suggest that the “star”, given the testimonies about its luminous power, could have been the conjunction of the planets Saturn and Jupiter, in the constellation of Pisces. In this sense, the Three Wise Men possibly decide to travel in search of the Messiah because, in ancient astrology, Jupiter was considered the star of the Prince of the world; the constellation of Pisces, as the sign of the end of times; and the planet Saturn in the East, like the star of Palestine.

In short, it is presumed that the wise men of the East understood that the “Lord of the end of time” would appear that year in Palestine. That’s why they came to Jerusalem, to Herod’s palace, and asked for “the king of the Jews.”