“Wise men from the east came to Jerusalem.” How we would love to know more! Where did they come from? Were they all from the same place? How long did they have to travel? What was the nature of the art by which they interpreted a star appearing in the heavens to mean that a new king was born to a tiny, insignificant Roman province? For that matter, what did they think he would be king of? They say he is to be king of the Jews, but why should they care? What prophecies of their people was this child the answer to?

I t is easy to think that Gabriel and the other angels knew what God was doing all along: that when the promise was made

I would like to start by asking you to consider an incorrect image. Imagine God, before he creates anything. He is not in Heaven, for He has not made it; He is not in space, for it does not yet exist. He is not anywhere, for the idea of place has yet to be created. So you cannot imagine anything outside of Him: you must simply imagine Him, and you are bathed in Him, swimming in the ocean of his being, an ocean with no shores and no surface, for all is submerged.

Medieval Christians had the habit of referring to our life in this world as in via, “on a journey,” as opposed to Heaven, where we would be in patria, “in the homeland.” Accordingly, they thought of themselves as viatores, “travelers” or “people of the way.” The Lord’s Supper, which to them was the pinnacle of the grace of God, was called viaticum, “waybread,” “that which sustains the journeyer.”