The Wise Man
A Homily for the 1st Sunday After Epiphany
If you really wanted wisdom today—deep, clear, life-ordering wisdom— where would you go? Most people reach instinctively for a screen. We go to Google, YouTube, podcasts, “thought leaders,” influencers, self-help gurus. We live in an age drowning in information and yet starving for wisdom. We know more facts than any generation before us, yet we are not much wiser.
Set that image beside today’s Gospel. Last Tuesdy, at the Feast of the Epiphany, we heard of wise men from the East seeking the newborn King, drawn by a star to fall down and worship Jesus. Today, on this First Sunday after Epiphany, we again hear of people seeking Jesus— not foreign sages this time, but His own parents. Mary and Joseph have gone up to Jerusalem for the seven-day Passover feast. As they return home in the pilgrim caravan, they travel a whole day before realizing that their most precious “cargo” is missing: their twelve-year-old Son.
St. Luke tells us they return to Jerusalem and search for three days. Any parent knows the sick feeling in the pit of the stomach—three days of imagining the worst, three days of frantic looking and calling His Name. And then they find Him. Not lost. Not panicked. Not hiding, but,
“…sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.” (St. Luke ii. 46–47)
This is the only story the Gospels give us from the Lord’s boyhood. The Holy Ghost is very sparing with these details,
so when He gives us one, we must pay attention. The Church reads this Gospel in Epiphany-tide to show us not merely that Jesus was clever, or that He loved His Father’s house, but that Divine Wisdom Himself is sitting in the midst of Israel’s teachers. Christ is the Epiphany—the manifestation—of the Wisdom of God. Jesus is the Wise Man, “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). That is what we are invited to behold today.
Scripture sets before us a sharp contrast: worldly wisdom on the one hand, Divine Wisdom on the other. Worldly wisdom is built on human intuition and experience apart from Divine revelation. It can look impressive: clever, practical, even “spiritual.” But because it is unanchored in God, it is thin, unproductive at best, and at worst, foolish and devilish. It often dresses itself in religious clothing: the language of “spirituality,” the promises of self-help and new-age philosophy, sermons that make much of our earthly aspirations and little of God’s holiness.
Yet because it is divorced from God’s revelation, it is essentially God-opposing— a house built on sand, destined to fall when the storm comes. Even within contemporary Christian culture, the rise of secularism and materialism, the disdain for covenant faithfulness and holiness, is slowly pushing out the fear of the Lord, and therefore pushing out Divine Wisdom. More and more people live a kind of practical atheism—not necessarily denying God with their lips, but living as though He were irrelevant—a version as vapid as its pagan counterpart.
True wisdom, by contrast, is Divine Wisdom. It is an intrinsic characteristic of God Himself. He revealed His Wisdom to Israel in the gift of the Torah— the Law, the first five books of Moses. “Torah” means “to direct” and “to instruct.” God instructed His people to seek and follow the Wisdom of His Law, for this Wisdom granted all things necessary to live faithfully before Him.
Divine Wisdom is always revealed for the attainment of holiness, to teach us to walk in righteousness.
Through Moses and the Prophets, God did not simply hand Israel religious information; He formed them. The Law was a schoolmaster to lead His people into holiness and guard them against sin. To Job, the Lord says:
“Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” (Job xxviii. 28)
Reverent awe and repentance—that is where Wisdom begins.
What was spoken through the Law and the Prophets has now been fully communicated in the Incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God. In the person of Christ, St. Paul sees Jesus as the new Torah—the Law of God incarnate. He is:
“the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians i. 15)
Everything that the commandments and Wisdom of God were meant to produce in Israel is now embodied in this Child, this Man. Over and over again, the Gospels show Jesus as the true Solomon—the wisest of kings—not merely endowed with wisdom, but Wisdom Himself in human flesh.
Our Lord says:
“The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.” (St. Matthew xii. 42)
St. Paul declares:
“But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” (1 Corinthians i. 30)
Christ is made unto us Wisdom.
To be wise is not merely to gather principles; it is to be united to a Person. Wisdom is not an idea we master; Wisdom is Someone to whom we must belong. The same Wisdom that spoke through Moses and the Prophets now sits in the Temple at twelve years old, astonishing the doctors of the Law. The boy in the midst of the teachers is the eternal Wisdom of God in the midst of His people. If we desire to live wisely, we must draw near to Christ.
And as Mary and Joseph discovered, we must find Him where He is. Mary and Joseph find the Lord where, in a sense, He has always been:
“Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (St. Luke ii. 49)
They find Him in the Temple, in His Father’s house. So where do we find Divine Wisdom now? In His Body, the Church,
which in this age is the dwelling place of Wisdom. The Church is the house of Divine Wisdom, the place where Christ, our Wisdom, meets and forms His people. And He does so chiefly in three ways.
First, prayer.
If God is Wisdom and we are not, then the first act of wisdom is to ask. St. James exhorts us:
“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” (James i. 5)
Prayer rightly positions us to receive heavenly wisdom. In prayer, we confess: we are creatures, not Creator; dependent, not independent; weak, not strong; foolish, not wise. Man’s wisdom is the wisdom of the proud. Pride is the great obstacle to illumination. Only humility receives Wisdom. Faith opens our eyes to see who we truly are and who God truly is. Those who cannot see their need will never ask for help. So we seek Wisdom by bowing the knee— by asking God to guide us, to order our steps, to conform our minds to the mind of Christ.
Second, Holy Scripture.
We also seek Wisdom in Holy Scripture. Divine Wisdom has been inscribed in the Bible, given to illuminate the heart and mind. The Word of God is “a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”
It is essential for every believer to draw near to Scripture, because “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ,” and we become fools. Holy Scripture is given for our salvation and to guide our feet as we strive to live holy lives in anticipation of the Lord’s return.
But we must remember: God gave the Scriptures to the Church as the keeper of doctrine and revealed Wisdom. The Church precedes the Bible, and, as St. Paul says, the Church is the “ground and pillar of truth. That is why we read the Bible in conversation with the whole Church and not alone, isolated in our own limited understanding, where we meet too many closed doors and easily slip into error. The Wisdom of the Apostles and Fathers tells us that our reading and study of the Bible must always be in harmonious accord with the faith of the one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The Scriptures are the voice of the pilgrim People of God, and only within the faith of this People are we “correctly attuned” to understand Sacred Scripture.
Third, the Eucharist.
Jesus, who is Divine Wisdom, is uniquely present to His Church in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. Friends, the Church is the house of Divine Wisdom, where the saints feast upon God’s Wisdom through the Eucharistic banquet. Here we are fed and strengthened in the inner man with Divine Wisdom made present at the altar. The presence of the risen Christ in the Eucharist is an inexhaustible mystery that the Church can never fully explain in words. And yet, somehow, through this sacrament we participate in the revealed Wisdom of God. In the sacred bread and wine, the great mystery of our salvation is made known—the Wisdom of God who entered time and space, took flesh, and gave His life that we might enjoy eternal life.
The glorious plan of Divine salvation, once made known to the Magi by a star, is revealed to us at this altar. We should desire to understand this Wisdom more deeply, to enter more fully into the gift of the Eucharist, wherein is revealed the eternal thought of Divine Wisdom—that God Himself becomes one of us, takes upon Himself the penalty of our sins, that by His death we might be raised to new life and walk in Wisdom, keeping His commandments.
Beloved, hear the Wisdom of St. Paul:
“Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans xii. 2)
That renewing comes only by sitting at the feet of Wisdom.
The truth is, we are always being catechized by something. If we are not consciously learning from Christ—through prayer, Scripture, Sacrament, Catechetical instruction, and the life of the Church—then we are being formed by something else: the culture, the media, less-than-wise friends, worldly philosophers, musicians, and influencers, or perhaps more alarming, the machinations of our own feelings and perceptions. There may be fragments of truth there, but the wisdom of this world will never lead us to heaven.
Those who seek wisdom apart from Jesus are like Mary and Joseph in those first hours—running here and there, anxious and exhausted, until they finally find Him in His Father’s house. And when He is found, the wise person listens and does whatsoever He says.
St. Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph found their Son in the Temple “after three days.” It is hard not to hear an echo of another third day to come: three days in the grave, three days under the power of death, and then, resurrection morning. Even as a boy, His orientation is clear:
“How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (St. Luke ii. 49)
That childhood devotion in the Temple will ripen into the Gethsemane prayer: “Not my will, but thine, be done.” The obedient boy of twelve will become the obedient Son on the Cross, who “by his one oblation of himself once offered” made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. He is the true Wise Man, the fulfiller of the Torah, the One whose obedience overthrows death.
As the first Overcomer, He stands in our midst and graciously offers life and Wisdom to any who seeks Him and desires to walk in His ways. So let us end with the voice of Wisdom herself, which is, finally, the voice of Christ:
“Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD.” (Proverbs viii. 32–35)
Amen. +
