Pastor's Spiritual Reflections

By Fr. Leo Schneider (1/4/2009)

Dear People of Holy Name,

In Luke’s infancy narrative that we heard at Christmas, the first to see the Child Jesus are the Shepherds. The angel appears to them to announce the birth of the Savior. The beauty of Luke’s gospel is that it is the outcasts of society who are invited in first, the poor shepherds who live in the hills tending the sheep, to see the infant Christ.

In Matthew’s version that we hear today there is another surprise. The first to seek and see the Christ are the magi from the East. These men were Gentiles, not Jews. This expresses the experience of the early Church, where many of the Jew’s were indifferent to the claim that Jesus was the Son of God. It also makes Matthew’s point that Jesus came for all people, Jew as well as Gentile. Thus Jesus instructs his disciples at the end of the Gospel to go forth and baptize all nations in the name of the Trinity.

As I think about the Christ who came for all people and who did not exclude the outcast and the sinner, it makes me wonder how we as a Church and how I myself as an individual have built our faith on the foundation of such a loving self-sacrificing God? Are we exclusive of people? Are there people not welcomed to our table? Is there a common foundation here for us to build unity between the Churches? Such questions call us to question and dialogue about what we assume is sacred and what is not.

To honestly reflect on the questions above we need to be able to rise above cultural assumptions to discover anew what Christ would do, or what his unconditional love calls us to do in the political, social and economic world of today. It calls us to do what the magi did, to set out and seek the Lord even if it takes us to ‘foreign’ lands, to places we are not comfortable with. It is then we will be able to offer the symbolic gifts to Christ that they gave, gold, frankincense and myrrh.

In the giving of gold they offered the riches of this life to the Lord. With the frankincense they offered their spirits as their prayers would rise with the incense, and the myrrh expressed their willingness to share in Christ’s death to rise with him, as myrrh was used for burial preparation. These gifts are the gifts put in their hands by the early Church and reflect their faith in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

We are called to give the gold of our lives to the Lord by looking at material possession through the eyes of the Gospel. We are called to give our lives to the Lord through the use of our gifts and talents given in service of the one who made us. In doing so we dedicate our lives to the Lord, thus accepting the call to unite our lives with his so that we may share fully in is life, his suffering and death, and ultimately in his resurrection.

When we truly give the Lord our gold, frankincense and myrrh, our lives become holy. For it is then we achieve the purpose and mission of our lives here on earth, and become ready with eager hearts to embrace the gift of death that finally brings to us the unity with God we so long for.

Ours is to realize that Christ came for us and that our ultimate goal is to share as fully as we can in his life. To do so we strive each day to seek the Lord, wherever that may take us, and to continually offer to the Lord the gold, frankincense and myrrh of our lives. May the Lord help us know his great love for us, may he inspire us to seek him in all things and may we learn to share fully in his life in giving back to him our gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

In Christ’s peace, Fr. Leo