“In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?  For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage’.  When King Herod heard this, he was frightened…” (NRSV, Matthew 2:1-3)

Our Lord’s earthly life represented the supreme personal clash between God on the one side and sinful man on the other: and that clash is reflected in the violent personal contrasts it provoked.

For example, as his life drew to its end, we see face to face in Gethsemane Judas and Peter. Both were Apostles, both had shared a common life together with Our Lord; yet while the one sought to destroy his Master, the other endeavoured to protect him. And that contrast persisted all Good Friday. Peter went out and wept bitterly, Judas went out and hanged himself.

Likewise at the beginning of Our Lord’s earthly life, the same sharp personal contrast soon revealed itself. Two contrary forces met in Jerusalem at that holy time. There was Herod, King of Judea: and there were the wise men, also Kings – from Persian lands afar as tradition has it: used, like Herod, to power and luxury, but there the likeness ends.

The Three Kings, when they set out on their journey, had left their power and luxury behind them. The star they gladly followed had led them into the unknown with all its perils. They had passed as strangers and pilgrims through foreign countries with no certainty that they would ever return in safety or see their native land again.

And they had taken this risk, not with the idea of gain or of adding to their Kingdoms, but only of paying homage to a greater King than themselves and of giving to him the produce of their country as a token of their submission to his sovereignty. Indeed they were so unworldly that, when they found the infant King of Kings, they did not hesitate to kneel in homage before him, poor and unknown though they saw and knew him to be.

Very different from King Herod, whose lust for power and luxury had led him to secure his throne by murdering, among others, his wife and three of his sons.

The Three Kings offered Our Lord gold, the symbol of his Kingship over them. Herod would admit no King but himself. They offered Our Lord incense, the symbol of worship and of Godhead and with it they offered themselves completely to him: Herod never got beyond thinking of his own honour and glory.

They offered myrrh, the funeral spice which symbolised the suffering Saviour who was to give his life a ransom for many. Herod only inflicted suffering and sought to take the Saviour’s life that his own might be safe.

So also, within ourselves there is that personal clash between God on the one side and our sinful lower self on the other: a clash which reproduces within us, to a lesser degree, that same contrast between King Herod and the Three Kings from the East.

Our lower self, the Herod in us, urges us not to make Our Lord the real King of our hearts and minds: not to allow our worship to leave any mark on our daily lives: not to give up committing this or that sin, regardless of how it must wound the Saviour’s Sacred Heart. And on the other side there is the dedicated life of the true disciple which is symbolised by the gifts of the Three Kings.

The gold calls us to turn to Our Lord and make him the King of our lives, the effective Master of our hearts and minds throughout each day: to surrender our liberty completely to him so that we no longer regard ourselves as free to think or speak or act as we like but only as he likes – though paradoxically, it is only by making him our Master that we become masters of ourselves. For to be the servant of our lower self is a slavery from which his service gives us freedom.

And, as the gift of incense which the Three Kings offered, reminds us, the way to win that freedom is by worship, that is, by consciously offering to God, in love and adoration, our hearts and minds and all that we are: without that offering, our worship must be an empty and futile ceremony.

For worship is not just a matter of going through the motions of attending a service; of kneeling for the prayers; of listening to a sermon; of singing the hymns, and then going out. Only when we actually give ourselves and our lives to God does all that come alive.

And the real test, the ultimate test, of whether we have effectively made Our Blessed Lord the King of our lives will be suffering – or rather, what we make of suffering when it strikes us.

It was so with Our Blessed Lord when the prophecy of the third gift, the myrrh, was fulfilled at the Crucifixion; when he hung there, denied by Peter, betrayed by Judas, forsaken by the rest, until it seemed that he was even forsaken by his Father also. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (NRSV, Mark 15:34, our emphasis).

But it was still “My God”, and the Suffering Saviour died in a holy, trustful calm because he had offered all his sufferings, including that dreadful moment, for the salvation of the world. “It is accomplished”. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Jerusalem Bible, John 19:30; NRSV, Luke 23:46, our emphasis).

It was so with his Blessed Mother. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord…,” she had said to the Archangel Gabriel (RSV, Luke 1:38), and she was proved to be the true handmaid of God when the prophecy of old Simeon was fulfilled at the foot of the Cross, and the sword pierced the soul of the Mother of Sorrows but could not for all that sever her attachment to God because she united and offered her sufferings with those of her Divine Son.

So Our Lord and his Mother have shown us the way which, as nothing else can, puts the final seal on our homage and devotion – and that way is the acceptance, and the transformation of suffering, when it comes, by offering it in trustful love to God as an act of prayer, in union with his Son’s offering upon the Cross – a prayer for, perhaps, the conversion of sinners to him, for the relief of those in trouble or distress, certainly for our enemies and those who have done us harm. When applied like that, suffering benefits others and purifies oneself.

The gold and the incense we give to Our Blessed Lord by our obedience and self-dedication: the myrrh we can only give by sharing with him the suffering of which it is the symbol.