Every year we celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany, and our family crèches present the richly dressed Magi paying homage to the Divine Child with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The Gospel reading for this day captures the mystery and the dread of the Wise Men’s journey to Bethlehem, pointing to a partly veiled contest between the powers of good and evil.

“Magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 

‘Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star at its rising

and have come to do him homage.’

When King Herod heard this,

he was greatly troubled, 

and all Jerusalem with him.” (Matthew 2)

With the gift of hindsight, we know that when Herod tells the Magi to find the Child and “bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage,” he actually seeks to destroy the newborn King. Yet the Wise Men discern the king’s intentions and safely complete their mission. After they have prostrated themselves before the Divine Child, they return by another route, and so Herod fails to learn where his rival can be found.

The story of these bright, courageous men of the East inspires our own spiritual pilgrimage to Christ during this season. They “passed from human calculations to the mystery: This was their conversion,” observed Pope Francis in his 2015 homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany.

Likewise, the Holy Family leads us to the path of the little way that places true love, grounded in the self-sacrificial poverty of the Son, above earthly temptations. 

In an age of anxiety, our families, our nation and even our Church appear fragile and threatened by danger, from within and without.

Over the past year, the U.S. Supreme Court redefined legal marriage to include same-sex couples, thus weakening the link between marriage and the creation of new life, and paving the way for further attacks on the rights of natural parents and their children.

Within the Catholic Church, the recent deliberations of the Extraordinary and Ordinary Synods of Bishops on the Family provoked further alarm from many Catholic leaders, as well as the faithful, who fear that Christ’s bedrock teaching on the indissolubility of marriage may be under attack.

Meanwhile, the security threats posed by jihad-inspired terrorism, combined with the economic and social alienation of a growing portion of the U.S. electorate, point to another host of challenges that beg for serious attention, rather than demagoguery.

Like the men of the East pondering the constellations, we yearn for clarity. How should we protect our families, serve our neighbors and choose leaders who will chart the best course for our country?

Despite all the odds, the Wise Men find a way to successfully complete their mission. So, first, we might ponder: How does the Holy Spirit inspire and guide their path?

At its core, it is a journey of faith, prompted by a mysterious hunger to know and adore the Word. “Faith draws us into a state of being seized by the restlessness of God, and it makes us pilgrims who are on an inner journey towards the true King of the world and his promise of justice, truth and love,” explained then-Pope Benedict XVI in his 2013 homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany.

This journey is sustained by prayer. “St. Augustine once said that prayer is ultimately nothing more than the realization and radicalization of our yearning for God. Instead of ‘yearning,’ we could also translate the word as ‘restlessness’ and say that prayer would detach us from our false security, from our being enclosed within material and visible realities, and would give us a restlessness for God and thus an openness to and concern for one another,” continued Benedict.

The Wise Men also needed courage “to grasp the meaning of the star as a sign to set out, to go forth — towards the unknown, the uncertain, on paths filled with hidden dangers.” Has anything really changed since the Magi began their journey to the Holy Family?

In an increasingly post-Christian culture, it is easy to misdiagnose our very human spiritual restlessness as a symptom of an anxiety that can only be quieted by worldly solutions. But Advent and the birth of Christ help us see that we must first prepare our hearts and minds for a kingdom that is “not of this world.” Daily prayer, the reading of holy Scripture and the frequent reception of the sacraments offer the most potent nourishment and protection for the domestic church.

The Holy Family is the bright star that guides our progress. The sanctity of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, “her most chaste spouse,” serve as an inspiration, as well as a rebuke, to our own imperfect efforts to guide our families. Further, the Wise Men’s journey to Bethlehem points to a deeper truth. If we seek to provide an antidote to the selfish individualism that has fragmented our nation, we have to begin with the domestic church.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that a healthy experience of family life provides the foundation for other relationships that advance the common good.

“In our brothers and sisters, we see the children of our parents; in our cousins, the descendants of our ancestors; in our fellow citizens, the children of our country; in the baptized, the children of our mother the Church; in every human person, a son or daughter of the One who wants to be called ‘our Father,’” reads the Catechism. “In this way, our relationships with our neighbors are recognized as personal in character. The neighbor is not a ‘unit’ in the human collective; he is ‘someone’ who, by his known origins, deserves particular attention and respect.”

The Church makes no promises that faithful families will be rewarded in this life. The brutal attacks on Christian families and communities in the Middle East confirm this truth.

Mary and Joseph also faced a host of threats. Yet the shadows that marked the coming of the Son of God did not diminish their joyful, evangelical generosity. So they shared their most precious gift, the Divine Child, with the strange spiritual seekers from the East.

With Pope Francis, let us pray that we, too, “may encounter the Light, Lumen, like the holy Wise Men. Amen.”