I love movies about exorcisms. Apparently, so do many others. The 2023 movie Nefarious features a possibly possessed inmate on death row. Critics were not impressed, but audiences scored it at 97% on the website Rotten Tomatoes. Most people have an appreciation for the demonic realm, even if cultural elites are generally embarrassed about it. As is standard in exorcism movies, the afflicted person (in this case, a man named Edward Brady) thinks and acts like multiple persons. He is someone besides himself. We know what that is like. We feel fake sometimes, not ourselves.

We start telling lies around the age of three, the experts tell us. It’s understandable. Lying is a god-like power. Whatever I want, I need only say it, and the world rearranges itself accordingly. It’s amazing at first. But soon reality snaps back and I’m faced with a dilemma. If I remain committed to my lie I start to fracture into pieces. My words and reality drift apart, and I find myself lost in a lonely world of further falsehoods and fear of being found out.

In my work as a freelance writer, I have a regular column in the archdiocesan paper writing profiles of ordinary people in the local church. Laity, religious, and clergy alike — I hound them all to give me an interview, and when I do, the answer is almost always this: “You don’t want to talk to me. There’s nothing special about me.”

How strange it is to think that if not for Herod’s directions, the magi would not have known where to find Jesus. They were not Jews, they knew nothing of the old prophecies. It was Herod who convened the scholars. It was Herod who pointed the way — for ulterior motives, certainly, but nonetheless, this is the part he played. It was Herod who made the Epiphany possible.