… He inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem of Judea,” they told him; “for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” (Matt 2:3-6)
TO BETHLEHEM THEY WENT, these wise men from the East, bearing gifts to an infant born to be king. Not just a king—the kind people had known from time immemorial—but the King: the one, true ruler of earth and heaven. The colorful details about the wise men—that they were three in number, representing the fullness of the human family—come to us by way of pious Christian tradition. But Scripture is explicit about the gifts they brought to the newborn Christ: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Taken as symbols, those gifts mark the outlines of Jesus’ later ministry: gold for his divine kingship; frankincense for his holiness; myrrh for his anointing and burial. Coming as they do in his infancy, the gifts are a kind of anticipation of Christ’s mission: they reveal his identity, and what he was meant to be.
There is no record of what became of the wise men’s gifts. But it is interesting that one of them is mentioned in the accounts of Christ’s crucifixion and burial. St. John’s Gospel states that myrrh was used to embalm our Lord’s dead body when he was brought down from the cross. And myrrh was quite likely among the elements carried by the oil-bearing women—the yughaperitz ganaykh—when they approached Christ’s tomb on the Sunday of his resurrection.
Might it have been the same gift the wise men brought years earlier? That would lend a lovely symmetry to the story of Christ’s life as told through the four gospels and the Holy Tradition: three glorious wise men from the distant East offer precious gifts when they witness Jesus’ humble infancy; three humble women from Christ’s immediate circle carry one of those gifts to his tomb—where they witness something vastly more glorious than anything ever seen before.
Naturally, gift-giving holds a special place in our celebration of the Lord’s nativity. At their best, the Christmas gifts we bestow on loved ones share the character of the gifts borne by the wise men. They speak to the identity of the recipient—perhaps anticipating or inspiring some larger purpose in his or her life. In rare cases, a gift can be something we carry with us throughout our days, which lends meaning, purpose, a sense of completion to our lives.
Surely that is the case for the greatest of gifts, which God lovingly bestowed on every human being: the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ, born for our sake more than two thousand years ago, and carried onward through time in his mystical body, the Church.
We Armenians have long carried that gift in our hearts. That precious burden has inspired us to great heights of spiritual achievement, but has also exposed us to peril at the hands of others—much as the Holy Family, protecting the infant Jesus, was exposed to murderous danger as it fled into Egypt.
For us, the past year was dedicated to the memory of those brave, beautiful ancestors who likewise carried Christ in their hearts; who protected that faith and refused to relinquish it; and whose destruction a century ago became a holy sacrifice in witness to our Lord. Hereafter our church will remember them among the saints, as the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide. In God’s kingdom they hear our prayers for intercession and pray for us in turn.
But here on earth, the great gift they bore—the gift for which they lived and sacrificed—now rests in our hands. This unshakeable faith in Christ is their legacy to us. Like the most precious of gifts, it reveals something profound about us: our identity, our purpose, what we were meant to be. And just as importantly, it is a gift to carry with us throughout our days, to guide and complete the journey through life.
As we leave behind the milestone anniversary of 2015, and step forward into a new year, we should reflect that even the most worthy legacy has to be freshly appreciated—freshly appropriated—by those who inherit it. This is the idea our Diocese will explore in 2016, under the theme “Legacy of Our Martyrs: A Gift to Carry Forward.” Our aim will be to help the current generation feel the vital connection with the great gift of faith we have inherited. With the Holy Martyrs so vividly present in our consciousness, we will affirm the obligation of each succeeding generation to renew the gift that has that made our people exemplary—allowed us to survive, and prosper.
We note that as they entered Bethlehem, the wise men carried not only material items, but also a deep faith in God’s promise of a messiah who would bring peace and justice, redemption and salvation to mankind. Of all the gifts laid before our Lord, surely this is the one that pleased him most. Indeed, this defiantly hopeful faith is precisely what distinguished our Holy Martyrs a century ago. In this Christmas season, it falls to us to embrace their legacy anew, as we kneel before the infant Jesus, and repeat the beautiful words spoken by countless generations of our people:
Krisdos dzunav yev haydnetzav! Orhnyal eh haydnootiunun Krisdosee!
Christ is born and revealed! Blessed is the revelation of Christ!
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