Homily for the Solemnity of the Epiphany.
Today’s feast, the Epiphany, traditionally was the day for gift-giving in Italy, though that tradition has been somewhat superseded by the arrival of a more aggressive salesman, Santa Claus. Santa accepts both Visa and Mastercard—and, in some places, American Express—whereas the Magi bartered or traded in old-fashioned gold.
The Magi are still, however, known for their gifts. Matthew’s Gospel does not give a precise number of Magi, but since it lists three gifts, the Christian artistic tradition has always depicted three Magi—or kings or wise men, depending on how you translate the word for these learned, wealthy, and adventuresome visitors. Their gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—struck a chord in the Christian imagination, even if most of us would have trouble explaining what exactly you do with myrrh.
Ancient spiritual writers attributed symbolic meaning to their gifts: gold symbolized Christ’s kingship; frankincense—a type of incense used in worship—symbolized his divinity; and myrrh—myrrh again, gave them a little trouble. Some associated myrrh with virtue or with prayer. Myrrh is actually very similar to frankincense; both come from the resin—the sap—of desert trees, which makes them rare and valuable. Both give off distinct smells when burnt. Frankincense is sweeter, while myrrh gives off bitter notes sometimes described as earthy or somber. In the ancient near east, myrrh was used to prepare bodies for burial, so the presence of myrrh at Christ’s birth is sometimes interpreted as foreshadowing his passion and death. Perhaps that explains why myrrh is no longer popular as a Christmas gift today.
But more than the specific gifts of the Magi, this morning I would like to reflect on what a gift is to begin with. Today our idea of gift-giving is so shaped by Santa Claus—and by Amazon and Black Friday—that we sometimes lose the sense of what a gift meant in the time of Jesus. And when we lose our grasp of the logic of gift-giving and gift-receiving, we start to have trouble understanding not only today’s feast of the Epiphany, but other parts of our faith as well, like marriage and the Eucharist. Even our own existence in this world, which we did not create ourselves and did nothing to earn, becomes difficult to understand.
Because of the way Western societies today are structured, we are used to getting things, though not necessarily as gifts. Our societies are characterized by an enormously powerful State that controls massive swathes of public life and a global economy that runs on consumption. So we are very familiar with entitlement and with buying and selling, but not so much with gifts. An entitlement is something we are owed, or at least we think we are owed. It means we have a right to something—health insurance, unemployment payments, social security, and so on. If we don’t get the things to which we are entitled—if we are denied our rights—we get very upset. It is not always clear who owes us, and perhaps it doesn’t matter. If the government is working as it should, our entitlements come more or less automatically. They are administered by bureaucracies, which don’t themselves produce the goods they disperse. Somebody is paying, though we don’t really know who. If we get what we’re owed, we probably don’t care.
Two elements that go into gift-giving are absent from this structure of modern life: freedom and relationship. A gift is freely given. If a bureaucrat fails to process your medical payments, she will probably lose her job, but this may not make much difference to you because there’s no real human connection between you and the person who processes payments. Consumption—buying stuff—is similar because we decide what we want, and, if we don’t get what we pay for, we feel aggrieved. With the internet, our purchasing possibilities are practically unlimited. So long as we are willing to pay, we can have whatever we want; we aren’t even limited by what we see in stores.
Gifts are different. The receiver does not determine what he gets, and that makes gift-giving risky for the giver. Our myriad consumer possibilities today mean that you and I probably approach gift-giving differently than the Magi did. I doubt that the baby Jesus had myrrh on his Christmas list. Joseph, I’m sure, was grateful for the gold when he and Mary had to flee to Egypt, though frankincense and myrrh seem a bit less practical. Of course, these valuable commodities could have been sold or traded, but a question comes to my practical capitalist mind: why didn’t the Magi sell the frankincense and myrrh and just give gold, which is less bulky and accepted everywhere?
The logic of a gift, however, is not purely practical. The gifts of the Magi, who came from the East, in some way reflect their origins. Frankincense and myrrh are the products of those lands the Bible calls the East and cannot be produced everywhere. The Magi were offering something that reflected who they were, something of themselves.
What sets gift-giving apart from other forms of exchange is that it is personal. A gift shows that the giver desires to enter into a relationship with the recipient. Giving a gift is done freely, not because one is compelled by any law to do so. And this means, that a gift is not entirely determined by the desire of the recipient. That is one way in which the logic of the gift differs from the logic of consumption; if I buy something on Amazon, I determine what I get. This doesn’t happen in a gift exchange because the giver is always offering something of himself.
An anthropologist writing about gift exchanges in the ancient world described gift-giving as a provocation. Gifts are meant to elicit a positive response, an acceptance from the recipient, gratitude. That is what makes them risky. Unlike a commercial exchange, once the product is received, the transaction is not over. The recipient is free to accept a gift or not. In the ancient world, rejecting a gift could be the equivalent of a declaration of war because it meant rejecting the other person’s offer of friendship. The point was never just the object exchanged, but the relationship it created.
Losing the logic of the gift has real consequences for our lives of faith and our societies. If we obsess over “getting something out of Mass,” we may forget the offering of ourselves—which is what the Lord desires to provoke in us with his own self-giving. Fear of the risk of a gift of self holds many back from marriage today, and even children—we see this in the renting of surrogate wombs and in in vitro fertilization—are treated as commodities instead of gifts. The result of losing the logic of the gift is an existence closed in on itself, imprisonment in our own desires, weakening the relationships that create meaning.
To lose this logic is to misunderstand reality itself because a gift has already been given. The provocation has already been made. The gold, frankincense, and myrrh of the Magi were, after all, only a reciprocal gift, a giving back. Their coming to Bethlehem was a response to what they had seen—to God’s initiative written in the sky, to the gift they found in the manger. Their gold, frankincense, and myrrh may have had practical benefits to the Holy Family and may express a symbolic meaning to us, but before all else, these gifts are an expression of their desire to know the child and to accept the gift of God.
Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12
January 4, 2025
Oratorio San Francesco Saverio del Caravita (Rome)
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Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 