We Saw His Star Rising

Today, I finally got out my next group of Nativity figures. This is our bedroom window, and it is as far east as you can get in the house. I set them up first because I figure it must have taken a lot longer for them to get to Bethlehem from Persia or wherever they were, than it took Mary and Joseph to get there from Nazareth.

We know very little about the Magi. We talk about three wisemen, and in the west we call them Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, but we don't know where those names came from. We assume there were three because there were three gifts. In some places, the names are different and they believe that there were at least 20. At any rate, their main importance is that they were the first Gentiles to see Jesus. This was the moment when the Jewish Messiah was revealed as being the Saviour of the world.

My little Magi sitting on my bedroom window have no idea what lies ahead for them. If you told them, they had come such a long way to find a poor baby in a stable, they probably would have scoffed at the thought. None of us yet knows what surprises the might come at the end of our journey through Advent, all we can do is keep our eyes on the Light.

The earliest image of the Magi is found on a 3rd century sarcophagus. Images in catacombs and sarcophagi were the earliest Christian images. 

You can see this picture enlarged if you click on it once. You might notice that the gifts don't exactly look like gold, frankincense and myrrh.

I am going to departed a bit from my Advent Hymns, because somehow I just resist pointing you to this.

AMDG