of the Magi stands out as a great indictment of the blindness of the Jews. They
84 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS not seek like Herod to kill, but rather delight like the Magi to worship him; now especially that the very death, which his enemy longed then to inflict, he has already undergone from his enemies, for his enemies, and has slain it in his own body by being slain! Let kings now have a pious and filial fear of him, seated at the right hand of his Father, whom that impious king feared while he was still nuzzling the breasts of his mother. Let them heed what is written, And now, O kings, understand; be instructed, you that judge the earth; serve the Lord with fear, and tremble as you exult in his presence (Ps 2:10-11).
That king, after all, who exacts vengeance from impious kings, and gives guidance to pious ones, was not bom in the same way as kings are bom in the world, because it was the one whose kingdom is not of this world that was then bom.5 The nobility of the one being bom lay in the virginity of the one giving birth; and the nobility of the one giving birth lay in the divinity of the one being bom. Finally, while so many kings of the Jews had already been bom and passed away, no wise men had ever come looking for any of them to worship him; because they had never learned about any of them from an eloquent sign in the sky.
The divine books and prophecy
3. There is a point, however, that must not be passed over: this enlightenment of the Magi stands out as a great indictment of the blindness of the Jews. They were seeking in the land of the Jews one whom the Jews would not acknowledge in their own land. They found him, a speechless infant, among those who denied him when he was teaching in their midst. These foreigners from a long way away worshiped Christ not yet uttering any words, in the very lands where his fellow citizens crucified him as a young man performing miracles. The Magi recognized God in his tiny limbs; the Jews didn't even spare him as man in his great deeds; as though it were more telling to see a new star shining at his birth, than to see the sun mourning at his death.
But now, the same star which led the Mag] to the place where the infant God was to be found with his virgin mother, could of course have led them right to the very city; but it withdrew, and didn't appear at all to them again, until the Jews themselves had been questioned about the city where the Christ was to be bom. This was to oblige them to name it themselves, on the evidence of divine scriptures, and to say themselves, In Bethlehem of Judah. For so it is written: And you, Bethlehem, land ofJudah, are not the least among the princes of Judah; for from you shall come forth the leader who will rule my people Israel (Mt
2:5-6; Mi 5:1). What else can divine providence have meant by this, but that among the Jews would remain only6 the divine scriptures by which the nations would be instructed, they themselves blinded; which they would carry about with them, not as an assistance to their own salvation but as evidence of ours? Because today it may happen, that when we bring forward prophecies about Christ, uttered long before and now made clear by the events that have fulfilled them, the pagans whom we wish to gain will say that they weren't foretold so