The Wise Men
Of old, today was the Octave Day of the Epiphany. On some calendars, including even some forms of the Roman Rite, it still is1. This morning I finally chalked our door with the Epiphany house blessing.
I think it’s a shame that the Octave hasn’t been on the calendar since 1970, but these decisions are taken way above my pay grade. Here’s what the great Dom Guéranger has to say in the first volume of his opus The Liturgical Year:
A Solemnity of such importance as the Epiphany could not be without an Octave. The only Octaves during the year that are superior to this of the Epiphany, are those of Easter and Pentecost. … It would even seem, judging from the ancient Sacramentaries, that anciently the two days immediately following the Epiphany were Days of Obligation….
So perhaps today I will share G.K. Chesterton’s poem on the Epiphany.
The Wise Men
by G.K. Chesterton
Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.
Oh we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all the labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but truth.
We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And serve the made gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.
The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity.
Go humbly … it has hailed and snowed…
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.
The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.
The Child that was ere worlds begun —
(… We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.
The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.
Go humbly, humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.
Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain.
And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.
- These calendars include the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (where the day is properly the Commemoration of the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ as it has been since the 1962 reform), the Dominican Rite, and in some places following the Benedictine calendar.