THE MAGI
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the
king, Behold, there came Magi from the East to Jerusalem, Saying, Where
is he that is born king of the Jews?
S. Matt. II, i.
Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, which hath borne for us God the
Word. We give thee salutation with the Angel Gabriel, saying, Hail, thou
that art full of grace; the Lord is with thee.
Hail to thee, O Virgin, the very and true Queen; hail, glory of our
race. Thou hast borne for us Emmanuel.
We pray thee, remember us, O thou our faithful advocate with our Lord
Jesus Christ, that He may forgive us our sins.
COPTIC.
Out of the East, over the desert, we see coming to Bethlehem the train
of the star-led Magi. The devout imagination of the Church, dwelling
upon the _significance_ rather than the bare historical statements of
the Gospel, have seen them as the representatives of the whole Gentile
world. We often think of the treatment of the sacred story by the
teachers and preachers of the Church as embroidering the original
narratives with legendary material. We can look at it in that way; and
by so doing, I think, miss the meaning of the facts. What we call
ecclesiastical legend will often turn out on examination to be but the
unfolding of the meaning of an event in terms of the creative
imagination. The object is to present vividly what the event actually
means when the meaning is of such widely reaching significance as far to
overpass the simple facts. It is thus, I take it, that we must
understand the story of the Magi as it takes shape in pious story. That
the Magi were kings, and that they were three in number, emphasises the
felt importance of their coming to the cradle of our Lord. Actually,
they were understood to represent the Gentile world offering its
allegiance to our blessed Lord, and therefore they would naturally
represent the three branches of the Gentile world as it was understood
at the time. The importance of their mission was reflected in the
presentation of them as kings--no less persons were required to fill
the dignity of the part. There was, too, a whole mass of prophecy to be
reckoned with and interpreted in its relation to the event, the most
obvious of which was that of Isaiah: "And the Gentiles shall come to thy
light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising."
The Church story is essentially true, is but a dramatic rendering of the
Gospel story. We may however content ourselves with the more simple
rendering. We can hardly think of the stable as the setting of the
reception of the Eastern Sages. Just when they came we cannot tell; but
we seem compelled to put the Epiphany where the Church puts it in her
year, somewhere between the Nativity and the Presentation, and the scene
of it will still be, the Gospel implies, Bethlehem. "Now when Jesus was
born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there
came Magi from the East to Jerusalem." And at the direction of Herod,
and guided by the Star they came to Bethlehem and offered their gifts
and their worship. "They saw the young child with Mary his mother, and
fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures,
they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh."
We try to get before us what would have been the mind of S. Mary through
all these happenings which attended the birth of her Child. What is
written of her here is no doubt characteristic: "Mary kept all these and
pondered them in her heart." Wonder at the ways of God had been hers for
so many months now--wonder, with devout meditation upon their meaning.
Where there is no resistance to God's will but only the desire to know
it more fully there is always the gradual assimilation of the truth. S.
Mary moves in a realm of mystery from the moment of the Annunciation to
the very end of her life. It is so difficult to understand what is the
meaning of God in this unspeakable gift of a Son conceived by the power
of the Holy Spirit, and in the constant accompaniment of pain and
disaster and disappointment which is the unfolding experience of her
life in relation to Him. But we feel in her no speculation, no
rebellion, no insistence on knowing more; but we feel that there must
have been a growing appreciation of the work of God, unhesitating
acceptance of His will. Just to keep things in one's heart is so often
the best way of arriving at an understanding of them; is the best way,
at least, of arriving at the conviction that what we in fact need to
understand is not so much what God does as that it is God Who does it.
Our true aim in life is to understand God, and through that
understanding we shall sufficiently understand life. Failure in human
life is commonly due to an attempt to understand life without any
attempt to understand it in relation to God. It is like an attempt to
understand a work of art without an attempt to understand the artist, to
estimate in terms of mechanical effort, rather than in terms of mind. A
work of art means what the artist means when he creates it: life means
what God means in His creation and government of it, and it is hopeless
to expect to understand it without reference to the mind of God.
Therefore Mary's way is the right way--the way of acceptance and
meditation. So she sought to follow the mind of God. We are told little
of her, but we are told quite enough to understand this. We know well
her method, that she kept things in her heart. And we have one splendid
example of the result of the method in the Magnificat. There the results
of her communion with God break forth in that Canticle which ever since
has been one of the priceless treasures of the Church. The Gospels never
tell us very much; but if we will follow Mary's method they tell us
enough to let us see the very hand of God in the working out of our
salvation; they give us sample events from which we easily infer God's
meaning otherwhere.
And we may be sure that the months that followed the Annunciation would
have been months of ever-deepening spiritual communion, resulting in a
rapidly advancing spiritual maturity. One necessary result would have
been to prepare the blessed Mother to receive new manifestations of
God's Providence, and to fit them into the whole body of her experience.
She would not at any time be lost in helpless surprise before a new
development of the purpose of God. Surprised as she must have been when
the Eastern Sages came to kneel before the Child she carried at her
breast, and hail Him as born King of the Jews, she would have set to
work to fit this new experience into what her acquired knowledge of the
divine meaning had become. And one can have no doubt that these visitors
from afar would have told her enough of the grounds of their action to
illumine for her the prophecies concerning her Son.
The special incidents that the Gospel select for record leave us always
conscious that they _are_ a selection and therefore must have special
significance. That we are told that the Magi offered certain gifts,
rather than told the words of homage wherewith they presented them turns
our attention to the nature of the gifts as presumably having a
significance in themselves rather than because of any actual value. In
the gifts of these Gentiles come from afar to kneel before Him Whom they
recognise as King of the Jews, we are compelled to see a certain
attitude of humanity toward Him Who is revealed to be not only the King
of the Jews, but Lord of Heaven and earth; they give what humanity needs
must always give--the gold of a perfect oblation, the incense of
perpetual intercession, the myrrh of a humble self-abandonment.
These which are offered as the ideal tribute of humanity by the star-led
Magi are found in their highest human perfection exemplified in the
Mother of the Child to Whom the tribute is made. Perfect are they in our
Lord; and she who is nearest Him in nature is nearest Him in the
perfection of nature. We turn from God's ideal as set out in our blessed
Lord to see it reflected as in a glass in the life of her whose
perfection is the perfect rendering of His grace. Mary is so perfect
because, by God's election, she is "full of grace."
We, alas! limp after the ideal at a long distance. One pictures the
life of sanctity under the familiar symbol of the race course, where
many start in the race, and many, one by one, fall out by the wayside.
Those who go on the race's end, go on because of certain qualities of
endurance that we discover in them. In those who run the spiritual race
for the amaranthine crown these qualities of endurance are not natural,
but supernatural: they come not of birth but of rebirth. They are
qualities which we draw from God. "It is not of him that willeth, nor of
him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." The hand that sets the
race confers the gifts that enable one to win it. "So run that ye
may obtain."
And perhaps the chiefest of all those gifts is that which makes us, the
children of God, capable of the adoration of our Father. Worship is no
other than the utter giving of ourselves, giving as Christ gave, "Who
being originally in the form of God, thought it not a thing to be
grasped at to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, and took upon Him
the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men"; giving as
the blessed Virgin gave when she gave, as she must have thought and have
been willing to give, her whole reputation among men in response to the
call of God; giving complete, in which there is no withholding. That is
worship, sacrifice, the pure gold of self-oblation.
But it is possible to think of the power of worship from another point
of view. God never takes but He gives. What He appears to take He gives
back with His blessing, and we find the restored gift multiplied
manifold. So in the very act of our worship God confers on us power.
For it is true, is it not, that in the very act of worship we
experience, not exhaustion but exhilaration. In the very act of giving
ourselves to God, God gives Himself to us, and in overflowing abundance.
That is what we find to be true in our highest act of worship, the
blessed Eucharist. Here God and man meet in a perfect communion. Here we
offer ourselves in sacrifice--ourselves, our souls and bodies--in union
with the sacrifice of our Lord; and here our Lord, Who is the sacrifice
itself, not only offers Himself, but also He imparts Himself to those
who are united with Him. And out of this sacrifice, thus issuing in an
act of union, there flows the perpetual renewing of the vitality of the
spiritual life. We are sustained from day to day by this sacrificial
feeding; our strength which is continually being drawn upon by the
demands of life, by the temptations we have to resist, by the exertion
that is called for in all spiritual exercise, is renewed by our
participation in the Body and Blood of our Lord. I am sure that all
those who are accustomed to frequent communion feel the drain upon their
strength when at any time they are deprived of their great privilege. I
am also sure that many who feel that their spiritual life is but
languid, or those other many who seem only dimly to feel that there are
spiritual problems to be met, and spiritual strength needed for the
meeting of them, would find themselves immensely helped, would find
their minds illumined and their strength sustained in more frequent
participation in the sacrificial worship and feasting of the Church.
The attitude of vast numbers of those who are regarded as quite sincere
Christians is wholly incomprehensible. The life of God is day by day
poured out at the altars of the Church, and they go their way in seeming
unconsciousness of its presence, of its appeal, of its virtue, or of
their own sore need of it. The Magi come from a far distance on a
hazardous journey into an unknown country that they may offer the gold
of their adoration to an infant King; and the Christian feebly considers
whether he is not too tired to get up of a morning and go a short
distance to receive the Body and Blood of the Redeemer of his soul!
The Magi came also bringing the incense of their intercession. Their
privilege was that they were admitted to the very Presence Chamber of
the great King. That the Infant in Mary's arms did not show any sign of
kingship, the humble room where they were received bore no resemblance
to the presence chamber of such kings as they were accustomed to wait
upon, was to them of no consequence. They were endowed with the gift of
faith, and believed the supernatural guiding rather than the outward
seeming. The faith that had followed the star from so great a distance
was not likely to be quenched by the antithesis of what must have been
their imagination of the reality, of all the pictures that had been
filling their minds as they pushed on across the desert. It was no more
incredible that the King Whom they were seeking should be found in
humble guise in a peasant's cottage than that they should have been
guided to Him by a heavenly star. The gift of God to them was that they
should be permitted to enter the presence of the King.
This right of admission to the divine Presence is the precious gift of
God to us. Since the heavens received the ascending Lord the Kingdom of
heaven has been open to all believers. Prayer is a very simple and
common thing in our experience; and yet when we try to think out its
implications we are overwhelmed with the wonder of it. It implies a God
Who waits upon our pleasure: it reveals to us a Father Who is ever ready
to listen to the voice of His children. No broken hearted sinner,
overwhelmed with the conviction of his vileness, cries out in the agony
of his repentance but God is ready to hear. "He is more ready to hear
than we to pray." No man pours out his thanksgivings for the abundant
blessings he discovers in his life but the heart of God is glad in his
gladness. No child kneels at night to repeat his simple prayer but God
bends over him and blesses him. The wonder of it is summed up in our
Lord's words: "The Father Himself loveth you," which are as an open door
into the inner sanctuary, an invitation to enter to those who are
hesitating on the threshold of the Holy of Holies.
And there is no danger of tiring God: we come ceaselessly, endlessly.
The cries of earth go up to Him, pitiful, ignorant, foolish cries; but
they find God ready to hear and answer, fortunately not according to our
ignorance but according to His great mercy. We think of the clouds of
prayer in all ages, from all nations, in all tongues, and the very
vastness of them gives us an index of the divine love.
And it is not simply for ourselves that we pray, nor do we pray by
ourselves; it is of God's love that in the work of prayer we are
associated with one another. There is nothing further from the divine
plan of life than our present individualism. Our temptation is to be
egotistic and self-centred; to want to approach God alone with our
private needs and wishes. We incline to travel the spiritual way by
ourselves; we want no company; we want no one between our souls and God.
But that precisely is not the divine method. We come to God through
Christ; we come in association with the members of the Body. Our
standing as Christians before Him is dependent upon our corporate
relation to one another in His Son.
Important issues are involved. We attain through this associated life of
the Christian the power of mutual intercession. We find that it is our
privilege to share our prayers with others, and to be interested in one
another's lives. We have common interests and we work them out in
common. Therefore when we try to put before us an ideal picture of the
power of prayer, it will not be the solitary individual offering his
personal supplications to the Father, but it will be the community of
the faithful assembled for the offering of the divine Sacrifice. It is
the praying Body that best satisfies our ideal of prayer, where we are
conscious of helping one another in the work of intercession. We
remember, too, when we think of prayer as prayer of the Body of Christ,
that it is not just the visible congregation that is participating in
it, but that all the Body share in the intercessions, wherever they may
individually be. Our thoughts go up from the little assembly in the
humble church and lose themselves in the splendour of the heavenly
intercession where we are associated with prophets and apostles and
martyrs, and with Mary the Mother of God.
There was a third gift that the Magi brought to Him Whom they hailed
King, a gift that is more perplexing as a gift to royalty than the other
two. That gold and incense should be offered a King is clearly His royal
right; but what has he to do with the bitterness of myrrh? But to this
King myrrh is a peculiarly appropriate gift, for it is the symbol of
complete self-abandonment. He who came to do not His own will but the
will of Him that sent Him; Who laid aside the robes of His glory,
issuing from the uncreated light that He might clothe Himself with the
humility of the flesh, is properly honoured with the gift of myrrh.
And as it was the symbol of His humility, so is it the symbol of our
humanity in relation to Him. It suggests to us that uttermost of
Christian virtues, the virtue of entire abandonment to the will of God.
This is a most difficult virtue to acquire. We cling to self. We are
devoted to our own wills. We rely on our own judgment and wisdom. We are
impatient of all that gets in the way of our self-determination. We have
in these last days made a veritable religion out of devotion to self, a
cult of the ego.
But he who will enter into the sanctuary of the divine life, he who
will seek union with God, he who will be one with the Father in the Son,
must abandon self. He must lose his life in order to save it. He must
let go the world to cling to the Lord of life. This will of the man
which is so insistent, so persistent, so assertive, so tenacious, must
be laid aside and the Will of Another adopted in its place. Often this
is bitter. Very true of us it is that when we were young we girded
ourselves and walked whither we would; but it must be in the end, if we
make life a spiritual success, that when we are old another shall gird
us and carry us whither we would not.
The secret of life is found when the bitterness of myrrh is turned to
sweetness in the discovery that the outcome of the sacrificial life is
not that it be narrowed but enlarged; and that for the life which we
have entrusted to Him God will do more than we ask or think. When our
will becomes one with the will of God we are surprised to find that we
have ceased to think of what we once called our sacrifices, because life
in Christ reveals itself to us as of infinite joy and richness, so that
we forget the things that are behind and gladly press on.
Queen of heaven, blessed may thou be
For Godes Son born He was of thee,
For to make us free.
Gloria Tibi, Domine.
Jesu, Godes Son, born He was
In a crib with hay and grass,
And died for us upon the cross.
Gloria Tibi, Dominie.
To our Lady make we our moan,
That she may pray to her dear Son,
That we may to His bliss come.
Gloria Tibi, Dominie.
Sixteenth Century.
PART TWO