People of the Book – The Magi
This week the Western church celebrates the feast of the Epiphany, in the dioceses of the United States on the Sunday after the Solemnity of Mary. This feast celebrates the “unconcealment” or manifestation of God to his people in the flesh and is a highly significant day in many European countries, where its more traditional date of Jan. 6 closes the 12 Days of Christmas.
Matthew 2 recounts the fact that after the birth of Christ, “Magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem, saying ‘Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage’” (2: 2-3). Notice the text gives no mention of the specific number of these figures, their place of origin, or the fact that they were in any sense of the word “kings.” However, the Matthean Magi’s arrival and significance, like the Lucan shepherds, speak volumes about the infant and his eventual place in the center of human history.
Tradition and iconography have presented these figures in various groupings and processions, but it is today most common to place their number at three (largely because of the gifts they bring which are described later in Matthew’s account). In the Latin church, they are often given variations of the names Melchior, Balthasar and Gaspar (or Casper). Scholars believe that they were most likely of Persian origin, some thousand miles or more from Jerusalem, and adherents of a form of Zoroastrianism, the pre-Christian astrological religion of modern-day Iran. The Greek term magoi is used elsewhere in the Bible to describe the dream interpreters brought before King Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel, and so the Magi from the birth narrative are often described as members of a priestly caste of Gentiles associated with oriental mysticism, astronomy, dream analysis, occultism and magic. They are the first non-Jews to be mentioned positively in the New Testament as recognizing the Kingship of Christ.
Matthew explains that “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” (2:5). Note that the text describes the setting by employing the word “house” (Greek oikian, from which we get the English word “economics” — “household management”). Thus, it is unclear, and probably unlikely, that the child was still in the stable at this point. Many of the early church Fathers dated the arrival of the Magi to after the presentation of Jesus in the temple which is described in Luke 2:38, a period well after the infant’s delivery.
The gifts they brought were highlighted by Matthew for their symbolic value in describing Christ’s role as priest, prophet and king, (also the tradition behind the pope’s “triregnal,” three-tiered tiara). The gold was, of course, representative of his royalty and dominion over the people of Israel, and of the wider world. The frankincense, a fragrant resin from a Mediterranean plant which eventually hardens into small nuggets, had been used in ancient and Jewish worship ceremonies for generations, as described in Psalm 141, “Let my prayer rise like incense before you, Lord; my uplifted hands as an evening sacrifice.” Myrrh, a burial perfume tracing its etymology to the Aramaic word for “bitter,” was a startling gift for an infant’s baby shower, a foreshadowing of the eventual suffering and death of Jesus, “the Lamb of God, taking on himself the sins of the world, the Son of Man, nailed to the cross by our sinful race’s hatred of God, and thrown, him the Light of the world, into the darkness of death, the lot that was ours,” as Karl Rahner so eloquently describes it.
The Magi’s remains are today venerated in the German city of Cologne’s Dreikönigsschrein (Three King’s Shrine); hence, the motto of 2005’s World Youth Day, was, “O Come Let us Adore Him.” The pope has exhorted contemporary Magi, today’s “wise men” (and women) of politics, finance and science, to find Christ as the goal of the wandering of their hearts and the fulfillment of their search for the Truth, encouraging them, “Let yourselves be illuminated by him, all peoples of the earth, allow yourselves to be covered by His love and you will find the path to peace.”
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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