About
100 years ago, one of the best-known American writers was O’Henry.
O’Henry
was the pen name for William Sydney Porter.One of O’Henry’s famous short stories is titled The Gift of the Magi.
On
the surface, this story is not about the magi who are the center of today’s
gospel.Instead, it is about a poor,
young couple named Jim and Della.
As
Christmas approaches, Della wants to give Jim a chain for the gold pocket watch
that he had received from his father.The problem is that she doesn’t have enough money to buy it, but then
she gets an idea.
Della
has beautiful, long curly hair, and she decides to cut off her curls and sell
them.Christmas Eve comes, and she
arrives home with a nicely wrapped box containing the chain.
Della
enters the apartment and there is Jim also holding a nicely wrapped box with his
gift for Della.They exchange gifts and
are amazed.
Della
has given Jim a platinum chain for his watch and Jim has given Della some
beautiful combs for her hair.Of course,
they quickly realize what has happened.
Della
has cut and sold her curls to buy the chain.And Jim has sold his watch to buy the combs.
The Symbolism
This
short story is very touching not so much because of the actual gifts that Jim
and Dela give one another.
Instead,
it is moving because of what the gifts symbolize.The watch chain and the combs symbolize their
unselfish love for each other.
And
this must be why O’Henry called his story The
Gift of the Magi.The gifts that the
magi give the infant Jesus are not that important in themselves.
Instead,
they point to something else.They
symbolize something about Jesus and even about the magi.
Gold
The
first gift is gold.
Ancient
peoples realized that this was the king of all metals.And so, this gift points to the Child Jesus
as in some way a king.
The
magi sense that this Child will be a leader.He will do something good for his people.
In
this way, the gold points to Jesus’ identity as the spiritual king or leader.In fact, the Child Jesus is the Son of God on
this earth and he will do something great for all of humanity.
Frankincense
The second gift is frankincense.
Frankincense is like the incense we sometimes use here at
Mass.In Jesus’ day, when animals were
sacrificed in the temple, frankincense was burned to produce a fragrant smell.
This gift points to the sacrifice that the Child Jesus will eventually
make of himself on the cross.Jesus’
sacrifice brings about the reconciliation between God and humanity.
And now, whenever we celebrate Mass, we are repeating the
sacrifice of the cross under the forms of bread and wine.This is the sacrament of the Eucharist.
Myrrh
And then the third gift is myrrh.
Myrrh was used to prepare a body for burial.So in this sense, the myrrh follows from the
frankincense.
After Jesus is sacrificed on the cross, his body will be prepared
for burial.So interestingly, with this
gift Jesus’ birth and death are connected through the visit of the Magi.
The myrrh also points to a death and birth in the Magi
themselves.Their finding the Christ
Child means the death of their old perspective on things.
This is especially a dying to finding security in human
power.We see this in their wise
discerning not to return to King Herod.
Their visit to the Christ Child also means a birth to something
new.They are born into a new way of
seeing God as embracing all people and as identifying in a special way with the
poor and vulnerable.
So the myrrh is the most complex of the three gifts.The gold speaks of the Christ Child as the
Son of God and the frankincense reveals that he himself will be sacrificed.
And now the myrrh connects this Child’s birth and death and points
to the death and birth required of us as we place our faith in Him.That is the richness of these three symbols –
The Gift of the Magi.
Back in 2011, there was a movie
called Midnight in Paris.
In the movie, a Hollywood
screenwriter named Gil is in Paris.He makes
a good living writing movie scripts, but he dreams of writing a novel.
Gil looks back to the 1920s and
30s as the golden age of novelists and he idolizes F. Scott Fitzgerald and
Ernest Hemingway.Well, one evening in
Paris, Gil is dreaming of those early decades of the twentieth century.
Unexpectedly a car pulls up and the
driver invites him to a party.He goes
along and surprisingly, at the party he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest
Hemingway.
Gil is simply ecstatic, but
Fitzgerald and Hemingway cannot understand why.They have no idea that they are such legends.
Then, one of Fitzgerald’s and
Hemingway’s friends tells Gil that she is dreaming of the great age of French
art – the nineteenth century.She is as
dissatisfied with her life in the 1920s as Gil is with his life in 2011.
And then, the same mysterious
vehicle that transported Gil to the 1920s now transports this woman and him to
the nineteenth century.They meet the
famous artists Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas.
But these artists are also
dissatisfied and they are looking back to the Renaissance as the golden age of
art.Well, eventually Gil comes out of
his dream world and wakes up to a whole new understanding.
He realizes that our love for
things past should enliven the present, but should not displace it or distract
us from it.Gil resolves to make his own
life a golden age, here and now.
The Present
This scene from Midnight in Paris has a good lesson for
us at New Year’s.
We believe that all time – every
era, every century, every lifetime – we believe that all time is a gift from
God.God gives us his grace to make
something good with the time we have in our lives.
So unlike Gil in the movie, we are
not to get so stuck in the past that we miss the present.And equally, we are not to get so preoccupied
with the future that we ignore the present.
Instead, we are to live present
moment and lifetime as a gift from God.We are to use as best we can the opportunities and gifts God gives us
and make something beautiful of our time.
Mary and the Present
This, I
believe, is the example of Mary whom we honor today.
Mary is
steeped in the past with all that God has done and communicated.She, I have to imagine, is also looking ahead
to her future with the expectations that any young woman would have.
But
Mary’s strength is that she is present to the present moment – to the persons
and tasks and opportunities that God has given her.And because of this, Mary is able to bring
God’s Son into the world.
Mary,
by her example, calls us to make our peace with the present and be alert to
what God wants us to do in the here and now of our lives.Yes, we can look back to the past and we can
look ahead to the future.
But we
are to live in the present and give ourselves fully to the persons and tasks
and opportunities that are before us.If
we do this, we will find the kind of fulfillment in life that Mary finds.
And in
our own way, we too will bring God more fully into this world.That is, I believe a healthy and holy
perspective for our lives and for this New Year’s Day.
