A New Year of Gifts to Bring.

Yesterday, we celebrated Epiphany which is the visit of the three Wise Men (sometimes known as the three kings) to the stable in Bethlehem.   They are reported to have brought gifts for the divine child whom they recognized as King of the Jews – gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 

These gifts, as precious as they were being fit for a king, are also symbols and precursors of what was ahead for Jesus.  The gold was symbolically a gift for the ruler of God’s kingdom; the frankincense was used by priests in worship symbolizing Jesus Christ the High Priest; Myrrh which was used to anoints the body before burial foretelling Jesus’ sacrificial death. 

These gifts can have meaning for us as well.  We could see them as the inspiration for gift giving at Christmas and all that has become with the mad materialism we partake in today’s cultural celebration of Christmas.  But if we stop and reflect and pray, we can ponder, as Mary did, what gifts we can bring to the Christ in us.  

When I think of the gifts of the three Wise Men, I am reminded of the wonderful trope which the novelist Roberson Davies explored in his novel The Rebel Angels.  In the story, the character Uncle Yuko, understood the gifts as Gold, Frank Innocence, and Mirth.  Those gifts are something that the world needs more of today.  We need to have a heart of gold – as Neil Young was searching for.  We need much more frank innocence in our openness to the wonders of God’s creation which is being abused in so many ways.  And above all, mirth – to be able to experience “the laughter at the heart of things” to quote T.S. Eliot who wrote in an introduction of a novel by Charles Williams:

For the reader who can appreciate them there are terrors in the pit of darkness into which he can make us look; but in the end, we are brought nearer to what another modern explorer of darkness has called “the laughter at the heart of things.” 

Eliot, unfortunately, did not name the modern explorer who was the source of that phrase.  However, the laughter at the heart of things is to see the true nature of how things fit into the whole – how we all fit into what we are intended for in a world that sometimes seem to be chaotic and meaningless.  That, indeed, is the laughter at the heart of things.

Blessings on your journey to find the gift which you are intended to bring to the divine child.