At Mass, the homily referred to the gifts of the Magi to Jesus. Those who are familiar with the story (Matthew 2:1-12) will recall that when they saw Jesus, they gave gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. One explanation of these gifts is that they acknowledge who Jesus is. Gold signifies a king — the new and everlasting King of the Jews, the Messiah. Frankincense is offered because he is God. Myrrh is for burials and signifies that he will give his life for the salvation of the world. This interpretation is behind the hymn "We Three Kings."
But the homilist also referred to an interpretation by Pope St. Gregory the Great (died in 604). He suggests that the gifts represent what we have to offer to Jesus. Gold represents wisdom, frankincense, prayer, and myrrh, self-denial. The homilist said that we should strive to make these offerings the best we can.
He said that the greatest wisdom is that of faith, by which we receive salvation. We should strive to deepen and strengthen our faith by reading the Bible and other literature which tells us of God and the meaning of our beliefs.
He said that our highest prayer is the Mass, and we should try to be attentive so that we hear what God is telling us in the scripture passages which are proclaimed and so that we make the prayers that are offered truly our own. Beyond that, in our daily prayer at home, we should be sure that the words we say are said from our heart, and we should give God a chance to speak to us in the depth of our hearts.
The most important self-denial is to refrain from sin. Maybe we have allowed habits of petty sin to take hold in out lives — greed, envy, gossip, unkindness, lack of caring for others. We should pray for the grace to overcome such things. And then, more positively, we should live the lives of holiness to which we are called by acting in ways which make our families, schools, workplaces, communities, country, and world more the way God wants them to be. That way, we serve as the light to the world that God wants us to be (Isaiah 60:3).
I thought it was worth sharing.
*In the traditional calendar, January 5 was the twelfth day of Christmas, and the night of the 5th-6th was twelfth night. Then January 6 was the Epiphany, sometimes called Little Christmas. But the Catholic bishops of the U.S. thought it was an important enough celebration to be moved to a Sunday so more people would participate and learn from it. So now it is celebrated on the Sunday after January 1, which can be January 2 - 8, depending on what day of the week New Year's Day falls on.
7 comments:
I'm a little confused on the motivation of the Magi--were gentiles looking for a messiah? I know that jews were (and still are) to meet all of the prophecies (Isiah, etc.), and so I would understand why, in the context of the narrative, Jesus would be portrayed as meeting these prophecies for jews to see he is the savior...but I didn't realize gentiles were looking for a savior. Am I missing something from the historical context to understand this? or some other historical allusion?
Do you know if the catholic church interprets this story to be literally true? or is this just a symbolic piece of the narrative? I recall there are some inconsistencies between John and the synoptics or maybe its between Mark and Matthew regarding the birth of Jesus-- although I don't recall if it has to do with the location, time, or the story of the magi..or maybe all three.
Interesting post, regardless of my feelings on the matter.
Steve
heck all the religion stuff confuses me. all i know is i believe and i am made in his image so with that all the nuts out there are the ones that are confused.
besides they said it best on sordid lives they need to move church to another day besides Sunday coz after drinking all night Saturday who wants to get up for church..
I'm not sure who the nuts are-- I can say with certainty that I am not confused, and not nuts. My beliefs (agnostic, strictly not religious) are well reasoned and humbly consistent with observation. I'm not going to hijack this thread, but I still do not understand why people think "believing" in something for the sake of believing is a good thing. You should believe in methodologies and processes-- results then speak for themselves and don't require spurious beliefs. This is true if you are christian or not. If you christian, then you believe in the process of divine inspiration and human interpretation, and the natural conclusion of that is... the current bible.
Im thinking you intended the 'nuts' to be fundamentalist, but if you think that agnostics are nuts, then Id love to have a conversation to clear up the confusion. We're not nuts, just skeptical :-)
Much Love,
Steve
So far as I know, the definitive work of Catholic scholarship on the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke is Raymond Brown's "The Birth of the Messiah," originally published in 1977 and updated in 1993. I've skimmed what he says about the Magi. His conclusions are tentative, but he is inclined to see the story as having some factual background without being literally true in every respect.
Astrology was widely practiced at that time, and there were several phenomena — planetary conjunctions, comets, a supernova — which could have been interpreted as indicating the birth of a king. There are instances of rulers traveling to offer tribute to other rulers, seemingly spontaneously. So in his opinion the story has a fair amount of verisimilitude.
It would not be that they were specifically looking for a messiah, but that they recognized that somehow this newborn was a very important person. Brown makes reference to Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, which predicts a time of peace; and "[t]here was an expectation that a ruler of the world would come from Judea." p.189
The Catholic Church does not have a defined position on whether the story is literally true, but I think Brown's position — it is possible that much of it is true but things like a moving star, the slaughter of the innocents, and the inconsistencies with Luke make it improbable — represents one end of the range of mainstream thought, the other end being that, except maybe for a few details, it happened as stated.
Mark doesn't have an infancy narrative, and all John says is that the Word of God, who was present and active at the creation, became flesh and dwelt among us. So Matthew and Luke are the two who give details. One apparent inconsistency is that Luke seems to say that Mary and Joseph took Jesus back to their home town of Nazareth after the presentation in the temple 40 days after his birth, whereas Matthew has Mary and Joseph apparently residents of Bethlehem who flee to Egypt after the visit of the Magi (which Luke does not mention) and only return to the Holy Land after Herod's death, choosing to live at some distance from Jerusalem in Nazareth, rather than in nearby Bethlehem, for an added measure of safety.
It seems to me that the account of the Magi gives good lessons, such as those from last Sunday, whether or not it is literally true. The scriptures are, IMO, as the Church teaches, not necessarily literally true in every respect; but the human authors were somehow led by God to write things which God wanted to reveal to us for our salvation.
I see there have been a couple of comments while I was getting ready and writing me comment above. Thank you both. I wouldn't consider it "hijacking" if you guys wanted to continue the discussion, civilly. I consider both of you friends. I admire Ryan's faith, and Planetx_123's respectful presentation of his thoughtful questions and disagreements.
And lol at the quote from "Sordid Lives." Coincidentally, or providentially, I found a leaflet the other day about why we should go to church on Sunday, and I was planning to summarize it in another post. I hope to get to it in a couple of days.
Sure- I was not trying to imply anything about the utility of the message of the story, but was just curious of the history.
Thanks for the information- I forgot about Raymond Brown, but recall studying some of his work in highschool in religion class. We had two really good religion classes (my sophomore and junior years) and two really poor religion classes. The poor ones just had us read from the bible and fill out worksheets (worthless), and the good ones had us research historical context, etc. I recall learning about the priestly writers, and different sources that formed the synoptics, etc. as well as josephus and the controversy over the authorship of the pauline epistles. This is all in sophomore religion class. Coincidentally, it was all of this critical thought, introspection, and investigation that started my personal investigation into what I believed to be real. My religion teacher (who left to get a PhD I believe) was really happy that he spurred a student into thinking critically about the bible albeit it in the wrong direction.
Steve
I don't have anything theological to contribute today. I just want to say that the..
"...Maybe we have allowed habits of petty sin to take hold in out lives — greed, envy, gossip, unkindness, lack of caring for others. We should pray for the grace to overcome such things. And then, more positively, we should live the lives of holiness to which we are called by acting in ways which make our families, schools, workplaces, communities, country, and world more the way God wants them to be..."
...part resounded heavily with me. We should strive, be we christian or not, to create a movement toward being responsible for the ramification of our actions upon our communities.
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