What Can We Offer to Jesus?

This beautiful miniature introduces chapter 30 of a richly illuminated manuscript produced in the Île de France around the year 1410. The text, in French, is that of The Book of the Wonders of the World, written in 1298 by Marco Polo. This famous explorer and Venetian diplomat lived in China for seventeen years. There he became a close collaborator of the emperor, Kubla Khan, who even put him in charge of a mission to the pope. What he tells us over the course of chapters 30 and 31 of his book never ceases to astonish us.

During his voyage to reach the Far East, Marco Polo traveled across Persia (now Iran), and when he had stopped over in the town of Saba (modern Saveh), the inhabitants related to him a “true story” that proved to be an account of the three magi. One was king of the town; the two others were from neighboring kingdoms. For proof, they suggested that he go to a fortress named Cala Ataperistan (which means “the high place of the fire-worshippers”), a three-day journey on foot, to visit their tomb. Upon arriving at the place, Marco Polo discovered that “their bodies were still intact with their beard and their hair.” His guides explained to him that these three kings became inseparable, even in their burial, because together (and I quote), “they set out for a distant land in order to adore a prophet who had been born, and to offer him three gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—so as to know whether he was a god, a king, or a physician. For these people said that if the child took the gold, he would be an earthly king; if he took the frankincense, he would be a heavenly deity; if he took the myrrh, he would be a healer of our ills.” Now, “the child took the three offerings…”

And what will we give to the newborn child?

What, then, is the gold that a Christian could place before the Infant Jesus? The gold of a Christian, the gold refined by fire mentioned in the Book of Revelation (3:18), is love. But how do we obtain love? We purchase love with love itself: it is by loving that we accumulate love!

Provided that he or she is capable of offering the gold of love of neighbor, the Christian can add to it—without being a liar—the frankincense of prayer: a life of prayer that ascends toward God as a sweet-smelling offering, because it is not mixed with hypocrisy.

But the incense of our prayers remains fleeting without myrrh, in other words, without our communion in the Passion and death of Jesus. The myrrh in the life of a Christian consists of his sufferings, sacrifices, and death, offered with the Lord’s Eucharist, for the glory of God and the salvation of the world.

Blessed are we!

This brings us back to love: when we love one another as Jesus Christ loved us, when we give the greatest proof of love—our life offered for those we love—then myrrh, by a divine alchemy, transmutes us into gold refined by fire and makes our lives a pleasing incense that ascends to the Father. Then blessed are we, because we can adopt as our own the prayer of King David: All things are yours, O Lord, and we have given you what we received from your hand (1 Chr 29:14). And certainly, the only gifts we can give to the Infant Jesus—that are at the same time worthy of us and worthy of God—are the gifts he himself came to bestow on us.

In his immeasurable generosity, he came to share with us the gold of his love for those who are his own in the world. In his immeasurable generosity, he came to send us his Holy Spirit, who comes into our hearts to cry “Abba, Father,” in inexpressible prayers. In his immeasurable generosity, he came to hand over his body for us and to shed his blood for us, so as to grant us communion in his death and Resurrection.

Pierre-Marie Dumont

The Journey of the Magi, from The Book of the Marvels of the World (c. 1410­–1412), ms. Fr. 2810, fol. 11v., Mazarine Master (15th c.), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. © BnF, Paris.