GOLD, INCENSE AND MYRRH

                                                            Rosalvo G. Mota, SFO

Brothers and Sisters, Peace from Bethlehem

“And, behold, that star that they had seen in the East went before them, until it came just above where the child was. When they saw the star they were exceedingly overjoyed. And they entered the house and saw the child with his mother Mary, and they fell down, worshipped him and opened their treasures and offered him gifts: gold and myrrh and incense”

Why did the Wise Men give these gifts to the child, Baby-Jesus? What could the baby do with these gifts or how could he use them? What use and significance did they have? Let us look “en passant”  at the definition and use of each of the objects presented.

GOLD. A well known precious metal of great value. The Jews used gold for many of the most important utensils employed in their Tabernacle and Temple. A tradition that we inherited and which is still in use in our churches and in the most significant objects. It exalts the grandeur and the divinity of God.

INCENSE.  Fragrant aromatic resin and spice, extracted from trees which  is generally burned with other substances to produce a denser smoke and more fragrant aroma. The smoke of incense, which always rises upwards towards heaven, naturally suggests to man the direction of our prayers to God. The Apocalypse talks about an angel which offers incense to God with “the prayers of all saints upon the gold altar” (Apc 8.3).

MYRRH. Aromatic substance in a liquid or solid form, obtained from the resin of a balsamic tree from Arabia. Mixed with wine, it acts as an anaesthetic to alleviate suffering, as was used with Christ on Calvary (Mc. 15, 23).

Thus, reflecting on the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, we realize that the gifts that were presented were meaningful and necessary, up to His death on Calvary.

In this sense and similarly, we receive and live these gifts also in our life of secular Franciscans.
The first gift of gold, is the “Form of Life” that binds us to Saint Francis, who is  our main source of light, our gold, which is our RULE, approved by the Church and which defines our CHARISM, our SECULARITY.

“The secular nature characterizes the spirituality and the apostolic life of the secular Franciscans”, living the world and belonging to two realities: the Church and society. In this sense, we can use the beautiful images that Saint Francis presented in his dialogue with “Lady Poverty”, described in the “Sacrum Commercium”: “Our convent is the world and our body the cell of our soul”.

The second gift is our Vocation, our “incense”, our response/offer to the calling of our Lord, who is our greatest grace, as Saint Claire wrote in her Testament: “among the other gifts that we have received and do daily receive from our benefactor, the Father of Mercies, and for which we must express the deepest thanks to the glorious Father of Christ, there is our vocation, for which, all the more by way of its being more perfect and greater, do we owe the greatest thanks to him” (Test. St. Claire 1).

This offer should be made to God through our family life, our workplace, our encounters with all individuals, our presence and participation in social life and our fraternal relationship with all beings. Through our life of prayer as well, which elevates us to God like true worshipers of the Father, we offer our lives like incense to God. Living our vocation, striving to be perfect just as our Father in Heaven is perfect, we will be transformed into an “alter Cristus” for the glory of Christ.

The third gift we receive is the Fraternity, our “myrrh”. Saint Francis discovered the way of life of the first Christians and returned to the reality of Evangelic life.  For us the Fraternity is, like our beloved Pope Pius XII said “a real school of holiness, of genuine Franciscan spirit”.

Our “myrrh” is like a “school” experienced in its entirety and authenticity, where like the brothers and sisters of Penitence, we learn to live in the spirit of permanent conversion, the penitential practices, such as fasting and abstinence; we learn to feel compassion for today’s “lepers”, and relieve our sufferings; and where we learn to feel solidarity one for another, where we also drink “live water” and we eat the “bread of life”, in order to go throughout the world.

Brothers and sisters, living our “epiphany” with the gifts that God granted us: our gold = Rule, our incense = vocation and our myrrh= Fraternity, we will feel encouraged and continue to live the Franciscan vocation.

From your brother in Christ, Francis and Claire,
Rosalvo G. Mota, SFO.