Father Kleppner - January 2nd 2005
As we celebrate today the Feast of the Epiphany, I share with you a very thoughtful reflection by a freelance writer named Pamela Kennedy.
On entering the house, they found the Child with Mary, His Mother. They prostrated themselves and did Him homage. Then they opened their coffers and presented Him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2:11)
I rushed in after a frantic day of Christmas shopping. After a brief look through the mail, I tossed it onto the end table, accidentally knocking over the Magi. (Ever since our daughter learned in the first grade that the wise men didn’t show up until a year or so after Christ’s birth, she has forbidden us to put them anywhere near the chrèche!) As I set the three kings upright again, I examined them more carefully. Each one held his gift: a little chest of gold, a vial of frankincense, a jar of myrrh. I reconsidered my recent frenzy of gift shopping. Was there something I could learn from these three little figurines? First of all, their gifts were given with love. They had trekked a long way to find the newborn King, and , when they finally stood before Him, they fell down and worshiped. Second, they brought gifts that cost them something, not an inexpensive trinket or bauble picked up at a strip mall along the caravan route. Third, their gifts demonstrated an understanding of the recipient. Yes, He was just a young child, but they knew He was also a mighty king. They brought gold that spoke of royalty, frankincense that represented deity, and myrrh that may have presaged His suffering and death. These valuable gifts may have even made it possible for Joseph and Mary to finance their escape to and return from Egypt. If so, the gifts were also very practical. Was there a lesson here for me? So often it seemed my primary goal was to check the box next to each name on my gift list, indicating that I was finished with one more recipient and could move on to the next. The joy of giving, the love was maybe less than it could be. I tried to remember times when I was really excited to give a particular person a gift. I thought of the year early in our marriage when I created handmade butcher aprons for everyone. We had little money, but I carefully chose the fabric and appliquéd different items indicative of the person’s interests on the front of each apron. My husband’s had a hamburger, complete with a ruffle of green lettuce peeking out from under the bun, and my father-in-law’s had a black stew pot with red rickrack steam rising from it. They were not costly, except in time, but they communicated that I knew something about the recipient and cared about him. Another year I put together notebooks with old photos and original poems about our parents at different stages in their lives. My own children were recently reading through the one I had given my mother, asking her how she and their grandfather had met. The gift is still being enjoyed, over thirty years later. I recalled the special gift my own daughter had given me just a year earlier. On a very slim, college-student budget, she had secretly taken a photo of my mother and me from the back, walking arm in arm across some sand dunes. The picture, in a simple frame, brought tears to my eyes when I opened it. What a treasure! Maybe I have let Christmas shopping become just another holiday chore when I should be looking at gifts as an expression of love and caring, to be given from the heart—a reflection of God’s gifts to us over two thousand years ago. Maybe I could take a lesson from the Magi and offer gifts this year that demonstrated my love, a sacrifice of time, and my understanding. |
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