“And entering the house they found Jesus with Mary His Mother, and falling down they adored Him and opening their treasures they offered Him gold, incense, and myrrh” (Mt. 2:11). Jesus is found in Mary; God is found in His Mother. Universal law: Every man comes through a woman; every birth has a mother. God is grafted into the world in a woman and man is grafted into God also in a woman. And this woman is Mary. In her arms, the Magi found the Child-God. Thus we, if we wish to find Jesus, should not hesitate to turn to Mary.
“And the Magi, falling down, adored.”
The center of the entire Gospel of the Infancy in Saint Matthew is the Adoration of the Magi. Sin brought about the eclipse of God — the night. But God shines again, appears again. And man finds God anew. This is the Adoration of the Magi: the reunion of man with God.
To prostrate oneself, to fall to one’s knees, expresses total surrender, the softening that precedes every offering of self: love is to soften oneself in order to receive. Adoration is the expression of the reaction of man impressed by the closeness of God. Man recognizes his unworthiness, his deformity and sheer ugliness caused by sin in contrast with the splendid brilliance, the immensity of the burning energy and infinite kindness of God. And then, man collapses, lowers himself, falls before his God. This is what the Magi did when they recognized in that defenseless Child the omnipotent God.
Do you also fall to your knees before the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist? How is your conduct when you enter a church, a chapel where Jesus is present in the tabernacle?
Have you examined your way of dressing, behaving, and praying before the infinite greatness of God who, although He became a Child and later Bread, has not lost His dignity and immensity? Do you receive Communion with devotion and reverence?
The church, the temple, is a place consecrated for prayer and Divine worship. Part of adoration — of recognizing the power and excellence of God, as the Magi did — is to have proper conduct: to keep silence, not chew gum, not eat or drink, to dress modestly, not to use the telephone. There are other places and other moments for such things. The presence of God demands respect. It is necessary to recover the sense of the sacred and of adoration.
“And opening their treasures they offered Him gifts: gold, incense, and myrrh.”
Before the impact of the vision of God, the Magi give what they possess. That is love: offering my entire being, emptying everything into God with total availability and openness.
This account describes to us the reunion of man with God:
1st: TO SEE. They found Jesus with Mary, His Mother.
2nd: TO FALL to one’s knees: to soften oneself, to surrender.
3rd: TO ADORE: it is the posture of the one who accepts God, of the creature who is nothing in himself before that God who is everything in Himself. What the Angel taught the little shepherds of Fatima in his apparition: to fall prostrate before the Eucharist.
4th: TO GIVE: to give oneself and then all one’s possessions. It is to arrive, to rest, to crown that entire movement which involves leaving myself in order to rediscover God.
Meditate on the passage of the Three Kings and think, with the help of the Virgin-Mother, about what you can offer to the Child God in order also to manifest to Him your homage of love and adoration.
