were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death,
T.S. Eliot, The Journey of the Magi
Eliot captures the way in which the journey to the Christ-child changes us. We are not told which of the three is talking, but in that birth, he had seen a death – and he could no longer feel no longer “at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods.” Neither can we, having journeyed to the Christ child be at ease with the many “false gods” worshipped by this society.
We read, with horror, in Matthew 2: 16-18, of how Herod had all new-born sons massacred after the Magi had not reported…
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