The Story of the Other Wise Man – Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord One Catholic Life

The feast of the Epiphany commemorates the arrival of the magi,

and their journey to find Christ can inspire us

to reflect on our own journey to encounter Christ in our lives.

Each of our journeys is unique,

and no one finds Christ in the quite the same way as anyone else.

The magi in the Gospel of Matthew found Jesus in their own way.

The names and numbers of the magi are not given in Matthew’s gospel,

but we think of them as a group of three,

probably because of the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Our tradition gives them the names Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior.

These three magi, or wise men, read and studied the signs,

and when they noticed a particular star at its rising,

they traveled far from their own land in the east

and they found Jesus in Bethlehem.

For some of us, our journey might be similar:

following clear signs, point A to point B.

For others of us, the path is different,

a more winding road.

Such was the case with the other wise man, Artaban.

You won’t find Artaban in the Bible.

His story is told by the author Henry van Dyke.

It seems that Artaban had studied the stars with his friends

Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior,

and he knew that a king was to be born among the Jews,

a King who would change the world.

So Artaban arranged to meet up with his three friends

and travel with them to visit this King,

once they saw his star.

In preparation, Artaban sold his possessions and bought three jewels –

a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl – to carry as gifts to the king.

One night, Artaban looked up and said,

“The star! The King is coming, and I will go to meet him.”

He had ten days to get to the rendezvous

and join his friends’ caravan,

so Artaban immediately got on his horse

and rode across fields of Concabar, past Selucia,

across the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,

and finally arrived at Babylon at nightfall on the tenth day,

his horse exhausted,

just three hours away from his friends.

But what was this?

There was a man lying across the road, a poor Hebrew exile, almost dead,

in the grip of a deadly fever.

Should he turn aside, if only for a moment, to help this poor man,

and risk missing the caravan?

He couldn’t leave the man to die,

so Artaban jumped from his horse, brought the man water

and cared for him until the man recovered.

But, alas, he missed the caravan and his three friends.

Sometimes we think we may have “missed the boat,”

and we look back on the choices we have made,

wondering if they were right.

But Artiban was persistent.

However, he couldn’t cross the desert with only a horse,

so he sold the sapphire

to buy the camels and supplies necessary for such a long trip.

Fortunately, the Hebrew man he had saved

told him that, according to the prophets,

the King of the Jews would not be born in Jerusalem, but in Bethlehem.

So Artaban set off for Bethlehem, hoping to meet his friends there.

He crossed deserts, mountain ranges,

endured the fierce heat of day, and the bitter chill of night.

and finally arrived in Bethlehem.

As he walked through the village looking for his friends,

Artaban heard a woman’s voice through a doorway,

singing her baby boy to sleep.

When she noticed his foreign clothing,

she told Artaban of the three strangers from the far East

who had appeared in the village three days ago,

and how they said a star had guided them to the place

where a newborn child lay.

But the young mother also told Artaban

that the strangers had gone,

and the child and his family were gone too,

rumored to have fled to Egypt.