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Happy Feast of the Epiphany (January 6)
January 6 belongs to Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.
‘Epiphany’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘to reveal’, as it is when the baby Jesus was ‘revealed’ to the world. Epiphany comes 12 days after Christmas, which marks the amount of time scholars believed that it would take after the birth of Jesus for the three kings (magi) to travel to Bethlehem, when they publicly recognized him as the Messiah, the son of God.
The Bible tells us that the magi traveled from the East to Jerusalem: “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold wise men from the East came to Jerusalem.” This passage does not give us the exact location or country from where the wise men’s visit to Jerusalem started. Therefore, we cannot know for sure how far they traveled.
On today’s map, Babylon would be pretty close to Bagdad, Iraq, which means the magi would have traveled more than 900 miles to meet Jesus. By the time they got to Jerusalem, they were looking for a child, not a baby, which implies that they had been traveling for a long time.
Published in General
That is some distance to go.
Indeed. https://ricochet.com/1370722/wise-men-from-where/
Thanks for explaining this observance, Columbo. I’ve learned so much from my Christian friends at Ricochet!
Hence the decree to kill all males two years old and younger. King Herod wanted to make sure he got the child he saw as a threat.
I also like the thought that the three gifts were expensive and might have funded the escape to Egypt.
Rachel cried out in the wilderness.
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Matthew 2:18 [link]
Maybe the gold, but I also wonder if the frankincense and myrrh were used at his burial.
But why would the Holy Family stay in Bethlehem for so long? They only went there to enroll in the census.
That’s a good question. I need to study that.