“You mean we might draw a circle on the ground – and write in queer letters in it – and stand inside it – and recite charms and spells?”

“Well,” said Eustace after he had thought hard for a bit. “I believe that was the sort of thing I was thinking of, though I never did it. But now that it comes to the point, I’ve an idea that all those circles and things are rather rot. I don’t think he’d like them. It would look as if we though we could make him do things. But really, we can only ask him.” (The Silver Chair, C.S. Lewis)

This year Epiphany Sunday comes on the heels of New Year. In fact, as you will hear in the Proclamation of Date of Easter, all of our liturgical celebrations arrive quite early this year.* For example, Lent begins just five weeks from Wednesday.

I am not saying this to tell you to “get busy,” although for some of us it would not hurt to hear such an admonition. Still, the message is not so much to get busy as to get relaxed. In other words, what we need to do is to allow ourselves to enter the rhythm of the liturgical year. If we do, it will carry us like a powerful river.

The Magi are our models. When they met the Christ Child, they placed themselves under him. They worshiped him. In doing so, they gave up their attempts to control things from the outside. Those attempts sometimes do work, whether through the arts of magic – or the more powerful “magic” of science and medicine.** But they are beside the point when we meet Jesus. He requires our surrender, placing ourselves under his control.

It is not easy – and no doubt each of us will have reversals. Yet, as we begin the New Year, we have the example of the Magi. They found “the child with Mary his mother.” There is no better way of worshipping him than entering into the rhythm of Church Year.

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