THE MAGI ARE REAL

 

Adoration of the Magi -- 3rd century fresco in Catacombs of St. Priscilla

Were the Magi for real? When I was young, I used to think they were legendary—inserted into the Scriptures as a grandiose tale, a story within a story, a startling splash to emphasize the divinity of Jesus and foreshadow the fact that the Messiah came for all nations, not just Israel. Pa rum pa pa pum, was I mistaken! Nothing in the Bible is fiction, unless it’s an explicit allegory or parable. Why in the world would I ever have dismissed these amazing, godly travelers as mythical? Well, it started with Genesis 6 and the Nephilim. When I first read the Bible through from cover to cover, I hadn’t gotten very far when I was stopped dead in my tracks by a passage that sounded like Jack and the Beanstalk. Um, monsters in the Word of God? Hybrid humans? Wha? The biblical footnotes and commentaries I was using at the time were no help, so I filed Genesis 6 under the category: “Hiccups in the Scriptures,” hoping to find answers later. Maybe the author wanted to incorporate some mysterious origin-story into the Pentateuch to preserve it for future generations? When I read Matthew 2, the Magi threw me back to Genesis 6. Maybe these Nativity scene figures, these lawn statues, these Christmas card fellows were like the Nephilim: fantasticals placed in an historical account to make sure we understood a point being made, akin to a literary device.

Flash forward to my not-so-young days. I began to seriously research the Magi (whom I was always drawn to because I can’t relate to poor shepherds). Conclusion: the wise men were the real deal! In 325 A.D., my saint, the Empress Helena, while finding the True Cross and building shrines in the Holy Land, inquired about the Magi. Folks knew exactly where she needed to go: Persia. Although the Magi are depicted as three different ethnicities in most artwork, it’s actually a lovely symbol of the universality of Jesus’ Redemption and the mission of the Church to baptize all nations. The Western Church has assigned them the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, but Eastern traditions give them other appellations. Once in Persia, St. Helena was led to the burial place of the Magi. (Tradition has it that they preached Christ when they returned to their homeland.) St. Helena transported their remains to Constantinople where her son, the Emperor Constantine, gifted them to the Bishop of Milan, Italy, who built a beautiful church to house them. This Basilica di Sant’Eustorgio became a major place of pilgrimage. In 1164, Frederick Barbarossa conquered Milan and brought the remains of the Magi to Cologne, Germany, where the magnificent Cologne Cathedral was built specifically for the Magi (only took seven centuries to construct). There, the Magi finally stopped journeying.

Would you like your mind further blown? Around 2015, I had the good fortune of meeting a former rector of the Cathedral of Cologne. Here’s what he told me. The Cologne Cathedral is the only Catholic cathedral in the world that does not have a cross on its central steeple. It has a STAR. There are not three skulls, but four (and assorted bones)--thus the lore of “The Other Wise Man.” The Bible never says there were three wise men, only that there were three gifts. These skeletal remains have been scientifically examined, are two thousand years old, and the cloths they were wrapped in contain pollen and flora from all the places they were purported to have rested. Every Epiphany, the golden reliquary of the Magi is placed on display in the cathedral for veneration.

I appreciate the Magi more and more. I ask for their help frequently in prayer. Here are just a few of the reasons I love 'em:
--I am not a “king,” but neither am I a simple peasant. I feel I can find my place at the manger next to them (if only out of admiration).
--Those costly gifts of the Magi may very well have gained the Holy Family passage into Egypt and sustained them in exile.
--I’m tickled how the Magi outfoxed the “fox” (Herod) and returned “home by another way.”
 --Why did these foreigners come from so far to find the King of the Jews, and what can we learn from them? The wise still seek Him. The wise still adore Him.

Oh, and it turns out those Nephilim characters are also as real as rain.

ALIENS ARE DEMONS

 

Aliens are NOT cute.

Aliens are demons. This is not opinion, but fact. I am fairly new to this realization, backed by much evidence. My attitude heretofore was mostly indifference towards aliens, UFOs, UAPs, extraterrestrials, etc. I gave scant attention to the question, “Is there other intelligent life (aliens) in the universe?” and satisfied myself with this vague generality: “God can do anything!” Can He? God “can’t” do what is evil (because it’s the absence of Goodness, which is God Himself). God “can’t” make a mistake (because that’s a gross imperfection, and God is perfect). God “can’t” make a square circle because that’s an absurd contradiction in terms (and God is not absurd).

My second erroneous thought on the matter was: “If God created aliens, He didn’t have to tell us about it.” All well and good…in theory. However, if aliens were going to interact with us humans someday, God would have to have told us about them in His Word, and there ain’t no aliens in the Bible, or rather, not exactly. We’ll get back to that. Why would God have to tell us about this interaction? Because it’s rather cataclysmic. How do we know if they’re good or not? What should we make of them? Do they come in peace (and even if they say they do—can we trust them)? What is their place in the divine order? Oh, and there’s that little problem of original sin and actual sin. Are they sinful like us? I got thrown on this last question for many years because of my great love for Ray Bradbury, the famed (and Catholic) science-fiction writer. He wrote a little poem that essentially said: “If there are aliens out there, then Jesus has gone to their galaxy and died for them, too.” Never having studied philosophy or theology when I read this poem, I thought it was “sweet.” Now I know better: that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity cannot repeat the hypostatic union, cannot make the one ultimate Sacrifice over and over for different beings. Human beings are a very big cosmic deal because of the Incarnation."To which of the angels did God ever say: 'you are my Son, this day I have begotten you'?" Hebrews 1:5

Back to the Bible. There is other intelligent life in God’s Creation. They’re called angels. There are good ones and bad (fallen) ones, and the fallen ones appear as serpents, and can take on other appearances in order to deceive us. Now, why ever would they do that? Because they hate God and us and want to bring about our ruin, i.e., for us to join them in Hell. Oh, and they wouldn’t mind being worshipped as gods, either. Why would I identify aliens with demons? Would you be surprised to learn that those who have been contacted by “aliens,” or even believe they were abducted, were able to stop the unpleasant experiences by calling on the name of Jesus? Even non-Christians and non-believers have used the name of God, or a hymn or line from Scripture with the same success (see: tinyurl.com/AliensDemons). Exorcists have seen "the grays" manifest. To those who say: “I’m open to the idea of aliens,” or “I think we should be open”…be careful. We should never open our souls to the unknown, only to what is certainly from God.

What about those in antiquity and throughout the centuries who left artifacts of what appears to be flying saucers and the like? Um, yes. The devil is very old. What more deviously brilliant scheme than to plant evidence for aeons, building up to the ultimate “revelation” during a time of mass apostasy and falling away, when people are rejecting their only Saviour and looking for a new one from the skies? The conjecture is that the final alien deception will be a manifestation of these “evolved beings” who have “solutions” for us stupid and bellicose “hairless bipeds” (“Screwtape Letters”). They will pat Jesus on the head and say He was a great teacher, but that’s all we could handle at the time. Now we are finally ready to understand who God really is. They will claim to be bringing us peace and advanced technology to end all suffering on Earth. But before they can help us, we just have to submit to this one thing....

Orthodox and Evangelical Christians have been sounding the alarm about the probable coming “alien invasion/deception/disclosure” for some time, but most unfortunately, a very large swath of Catholics have been eagerly promoting belief in aliens (qua aliens). Most fortunately, however, two astute Catholics have researched and written extensively on UFOs/aliens for the rest of us. Daniel O’Connor (a philosophy professor) has a hefty doorstop-sized reference book called: “Only Man Bears His Image,” and his much shorter version is:"The First and Last Deception." Ursula Bielski’s fine book is “The Devil in Dreamland.”