CHRISTMAS 2012 (C)

Christmas time ends with the Epiphany holiday. Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, connecting three continents and three life periods, followed the way which the star had marked for them, toward the barn where the Lord of the World was born. The savants, able to read heavenly script and bearing most precious gifts the Earth could have produced, started with love on their long way of faith and hope.
God’s script are veins on leaf, spots on lady bug, broken arrows in a lightning, river-bed lines - all which is written on Earth. And perhaps there is no clearer fragment of God’s script than the starry sky. This script introduced a „moral law within us”, all our teaching about transcendence and all our comfort for transience, pain and death. Unfortunately, starry sky has been expelled from our lives. The higher our constructions, the farther away is the sky; the stronger our lights, the less legible are the stars. To enjoy a view into stellar sky we have to seize the distance and wilderness or to reach for the technology of an astronomical observatory which does not boost the Earth toward the star but lowers the stars onto a laboratory desk. We forget about the stellar sky. We are surprised by it when we encounter it. Thus, we have forgotten a crucial part of God’s script which for sure keeps an unriddled annunciation.
In ancient times astrology was a highly developed science. From the schemes and movements of sky the omens of events on Earth were read off. Our today’s horoscopes are just pale remnants of once immense presence of astral literature. In old myths of Ancient Egypt an exceptional astral event was associated with the birth of a ruler. Thus is also the falling star that leads the kings to Bethlehem in fact a concession of church to ancient and respectable astrology praxis. Among remembered stellar events of Jesus’ time there is no such falling star. This can mean that its reality is less physical than psychological or symbolic. Maybe it is just a usual attribute transferred on the birth of God’s son in different religions and myths. Regardless which is true, it is a symbol of unique connection of heaven and Earth. It is at the same time a signpost marking the „path, truth and life”. It is a reminder of the huge draft in which we are contained and which has to be respected and observed, it is a call for thrust which we are obliged to return. Maybe in our everyday life we do not see stars any more and we do not think of them. However, the heavenly flare from Bethlehem reminds us always of the fact that the questions of our existence are resolved by a glance upwards. And this is just what this year’s Christmas stamp message is about.

Željka Čorak