Personal Epiphanies
Our family Nativity set was one of my favorite Christmas decorations growing up. Alongside the Christmas tree (which shifted between real and fake), it represented the final, inexorable step toward the holiday.
As per tradition, we would place the tiny baby Jesus figurine somewhere within the tree, resting on a bough until Christmas morning, when it would attain its rightful place. Favorites, however, were always the Wise Men.
They looked important. Even as inert resin figurines, they commanded an air of significance which was enough to prompt me to want to hold and examine them as soon as we took them out of their dusty, attic-worn boxes. It certainly helped that they were the most lavishly decorated of all the figures, shepherds and carpenters not generally being known for their finery.
They also served to underscore the significance of the Nativity to my young mind. Three established, accomplished, and ostensibly wealthy men thought the birth of Jesus significant enough to travel great distances, carrying with them items over which, throughout history, entire societies made war.
Although I may not have fully comprehended the more nuanced significance as a child, I had an implicit sense of them. What Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar did was atypical; it appropriately portended the greatness to which Christ would rise, literally and metaphorically, in His own life.
Additionally, the story of Epiphany, as this visit has come to be called, carries much symbolic weight for our own lives as Christians; how we are supposed to contextualize our own individual relationships with God, our own journeys to Him.
We are all on different paths, some of us more sure than others of where they should place their foot next. However, we are all, just like the Magi, walking toward the same destination; we have seen the star, and are drawn toward its light. There can be no going back.
In a way, beginning this journey is a great deal of effort.
When someone is lost in the forest, the thing they search for most is the barest hint of a trail: somewhere to walk where at least others have been at one point in time, and who will hopefully make themselves known further on.
Like the Magi, we come from all over the world. If the world can be like one giant, dark, foreboding forest (which it certainly resembles, at times), then we are alike in our search for the blaze that will save us.
Gold, frankincense, and myrrh — things that, excepting gold, appear foreign as gifts to our modern ears. If we place ourselves in the cultural context in which Jesus was born, however, these would have all been seen as highly extravagant.
Frankincense was frequently prized more than gold, and myrrh carried deeply sacred associations, being a key ingredient in the oil used to anoint kings, as well as in funerary practices.
Apart from the poignancy of these items in relation to the life of Christ, they should get our attention as well. Not only did these travelers come great distances to see “the newborn king of the Jews…” (Matthew 2:2), they brought with them some of the most valuable gifts they could possibly have. Does this not, once again, mirror our own act of self-giving when we dedicate our lives to following Christ?
We should, each of us, seek a personal epiphany. Not merely a realization, but a dedication, an act of spiritual pilgrimage. This may be something we work toward for some time, as the Magi journeyed toward Bethlehem, over two millennia ago; but also like the Magi, let us come bringing Him our best.
Walker Price is an award-winning columnist for the North Texas Catholic and a lifelong resident of the Fort Worth area; he attended St. Andrew Catholic School and Nolan Catholic High School. He has a passion for reading, writing, and nature. Find more of his columns for the North Texas Catholic here.