En mageløs Hellig Tre Kongers prædiken

Med stor retorisk sans havde Fr Abbot Hugh bygget sig prædiken til Hellig Tre Kongers Søndag over mottoet: ”They came. They saw. They were conquered. They went home.” Da det kom til andendelen af dette motto, sagde Fr. Abbot Hugh: ”They came and they saw. They leave the road and enter the house. Their walking is over and they fall to their knees. Their eyes forget the star and find the Child. “Not crowned with a diadem, nor resting on gilded bed,” says Chrysostom. “Small in size, dependent on others, powerless to act, differing no way from any other human baby,” says Leo. And yet “their eyes were glad as they looked at a poor little child; for the Spirit within them told them he was a Being of Awe” (Chrysostom). For in this Child “something great lay hidden” (Augustin). Here was the One begotten before the Day-star. Here, in the House of Bread (ordspil over navnet Bethlehem), was the Bread come down from heaven to give life to the world. Here, at the centre of this feast, with all its movement and colour, with its gold and frankincense and myrrh, there falls a sudden silence…”

“… They came, they saw, and they went home – by a different way. They go home, they leave the stage, we know nothing more. Back to their families and world, back to their work, back to pressing on and growing older and dying in the end. But home by a different way. By a different way because they are different people now. Their saddles were lighter, but their hearts were fuller. They had come out of the shadows, and now they carried a memory, they carried the image, in mind and heart, of the child they had seen. Within them, brighter than a star, shone a vision of the humble, helpless love of the stars’ Creator. Within them now the Child was their conscience, and the way of the Child their way. They had seen and touched the gentleness of God. More, it had seen and touched them. They already knew, even though they didn’t, the mystery of the cross, of love to the end. How could they not go back by a different way?”