Monday after Epiphany
Pop singer James Taylor recorded a song years ago entitled “Home by Another Way”: “Those magic men the magi, some people call them wise or oriental, even kings, well anyway those guys. They visited with Jesus, they sure enjoyed their stay but warned in a dream of King Herod’s schemes they went home by another way. Home by another way! Maybe you and me can be wise guys too and go home by another way. We can make it another way, safe home as they used to say. Keep a weather eye to the chart on high and go home by another way.”
The tree in the family room doesn’t look as fresh and green. Streaming services stopped playing Christmas music last week. Parents are nagging their children to write those thank you notes for gifts which lack the glitz and glitter they had on Christmas morning. And just as it seems that the season has lost its luster, here comes the magi following the star and asking where they can find the newborn king. Every year they point out the real direction Christmas should take, and indeed the whole of Christian life. And more often than not, the way isn’t what we originally planned or expected as we find ourselves, too, going “home by another way.”
Going home by another way is a means to God. My aunt through marriage, Mary Donohue’s way to God, like the magi’s, wasn’t the way she originally planned. A determined and talented young woman, she left Ireland in the 1930s for a better life in America to help support her family back home. She married and hoped to start a family but the children never came. In fact, Mary was left a widow at a young age, losing her beautiful home and needing to find a job to support herself and a sister with special needs who had come to live with her.
Yet Mary never grew bitter and the losses life dealt her were transformed by her generous spirit. She served as a cook for a community of religious priests and brothers, sponsored many immigrants like herself, and spearheaded many charities. Mary’s death at 89 was deeply felt by many whose life she profoundly touched. Mary Donohue transformed the pains and losses life deals us and she “went home by another way,” the way of the modern magi, the way of generosity, sacrifice, and love.
After the magi left, there is a legend that, when the soldiers were looking for the holy infant, the Holy Family hid in a house where a farmer’s wife was kneading dough. The women covered the
Christ child with dough as Herod’s men searched the house. The child remained silent until the soldiers left. Afterwards, the most wondrous thing happened: the dough continued to rise, no matter how much was used for the baking. People came from everywhere to see this special bread. Ever since then there is always dough left for the next day’s rising. Whenever we eat the eucharistic bread, let us recall that it is Christ who is our leaven. He is our food when we must go “home by another way.”
-Timothy J. Cronin