Breakthrough! That is what happens when God reveals Himself to us, when we discover God in our lives. God’s boundless and infinite love and being is like light breaking through the dark clouds, piercing through and driving away the darkness. When God breaks through into our lives, we are changed forever, for the better. Everything we do and everything we are becomes tinged with light, love and laughter. Everything around us and everyone we meet seems to tingle with a divine presence. Even in pain and suffering, we are able to keep our heads up high, straining to see the source of that infinite light and love. Death is no longer something to be afraid of but rather serves as the portal to eternal life, where all our here-and-nows finally become one eternal moment.
The gifts of the Magi are signs of this eternity breaking through into our lives. Gold had always been the currency of everything that man holds dear and precious. Even today, during financially precarious times, gold is the hedge people go to as protection against all uncertainties. Yet, we know that man’s longings are limitless and our desires endless. There is always the hankering for more. We offer our physical gold for the eternal gold that only God can give to slake our unquenchable thirst and to satisfy our undying hunger.
Frankincense has been offered since time immemorial by men as their feeble attempt to go up and link up to their Source and Creator. It signifies our longing to connect with the Unreachable and the Unknowable. The smoke of incense rising up gives physical form to our prayers to God, with whom we long to connect. We know deep in our hearts that God permeates the whole universe and that everything and every place in it is sacred, where we can encounter the Divine.
Myrrh has always been associated with suffering, with death, with the end. Even in the things we fear most, God is there doing His thing. Pain and suffering are sure signs that we are alive and becoming the persons we are destined to be. Death is not the end but the portal to a new life where we level up into eternity.
When God reveals Himself to me and breakthrough into my life, he blesses all my desires and longings, takes them up to Himself and make them sacred and transform my life into an eternity of being with Him. Feeble and few though they may be, I open my gifts and offer Him my gold, frankincense and myrrh and do Him homage.
After their audience with the king they set out.
And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them,
until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.
They were overjoyed at seeing the star,
and on entering the house
they saw the child with Mary his mother.
They prostrated themselves and did him homage.
Then they opened their treasures
and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,
they departed for their country by another way.
Matthew 2:1-12