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Jesus said to them: “I have come into this world so that a sentence may fall upon it, that those who are blind should see, and those who see should become blind. If you were blind, you would not be guilty. It is because you protest, ‘We can see clearly,’ that you cannot be rid of your guilt.”

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Views from the Choir Loft

Little Christmas

Fr. David Friel · January 7, 2013

S A STUDENT in grade school & high school, I always “brown-bagged” my lunch. Every day of first through twelfth grades, I ate a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and some type of granola bar. In grade school, I would have a Capri Sun to drink, and in high school I switched to bottled water. So the contents of my brown bag were usually exactly the same. On a few select days, though, my mom would sneak something extra into my lunch. One of those days was always my birthday, and another one was January 6th, the Epiphany—what she would always call “Little Christmas.” Each year, I would discover a little wrapped present in my lunch bag on January 6th. That was my mom’s way of celebrating the Epiphany with us.

Why do people give gifts? What is the point of gift-giving? It’s certainly about more than just transferring items from one person to another. Most people give gifts to people they care about, which tells us something about the meaning of gift giving. We give gifts to recognize the value—the intrinsic worth—of the person to whom we’re giving the gift. So, when we give someone a gift, we are saying that we value that person.

The feast of the Epiphany recalls the day on which the three kings brought gifts to the newborn Baby Jesus. They brought gifts because they valued, respected, & appreciated this Baby. Each of their gifts represents something about Whom they believed this Child to be.

The first king brought gold. Gold was a precious metal, reserved only for use in the palace and jewelry of a king. So, by bringing Jesus gold, the first wise man professed his faith that Jesus was his true King.

The second king brought frankincense. There was only one use for frankincense in the culture of the Jews. It was burned around-the-clock in the Temple at the “Altar of Incense.” So, just as we still use incense today, even then it was something reserved for the worship of God. By bringing Jesus frankincense, the second wise man professed his faith that Jesus was his God.

The third king brought myrrh. What is myrrh? Myrrh is a sort of perfume, and it had one major purpose in ancient cultures. It was the perfume used to anoint the body of someone who died. By bringing Jesus myrrh, the third wise man professed his faith that Jesus was his Savior. As Bishop Sheen put it, most people come into this world to live, whereas Jesus was born to die.

The three wise men brought gold, frankincense, & myrrh because they knew that He was a King, that He was God, and that He would one day die to set all men free. What gift are we bringing to Jesus right now? Perhaps we value the mercy God has shown us, so we’ll give Him the gift this week of being merciful to someone who bothers us. Maybe we value God’s peace, so we’ll give Him the gift of working toward peace in our family. When we assist at Mass, we offer to God bread and wine, which become His Sacred Body & Precious Blood.

It’s easy to give someone socks or a video game or a gift card. But, can we go so far as to give God our very hearts, entrusting everything to Him? It is hard, but it is necessary. After all, at Christmas, Jesus gave us the gift of Himself. Can we return the favor?

Giving a gift to someone is a sign that we care about the other person—that we value them. Those little wrapped gifts my mom would throw in my lunch bag might have been little, but they meant an awful lot. How pleased God would be with even the small gift of our entire lives!

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    “Music List” • 5th Sunday of Easter (Year C)
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for the 5th Sunday of Easter (18 May 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. The Communion Antiphon was ‘restored’ the 1970 Missale Romanum (a.k.a. MISSALE RECENS) from an obscure martyr’s feast. Our choir is on break this Sunday, so the selections are relatively simple in nature.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Communion Chant (5th Sunday of Easter)
    This coming Sunday—18 May 2025—is the 5th Sunday of Easter, Year C (MISSALE RECENS). The COMMUNION ANTIPHON “Ego Sum Vitis Vera” assigned by the Church is rather interesting, because it comes from a rare martyr’s feast: viz. Saint Vitalis of Milan. It was never part of the EDITIO VATICANA, which is the still the Church’s official edition. As a result, the musical notation had to be printed in the Ordo Cantus Missae, which appeared in 1970.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Music List” • 4th Sunday of Easter (Year C)
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for the 4th Sunday of Easter (11 May 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. I don’t know a more gorgeous ENTRANCE CHANT than the one given there: Misericórdia Dómini Plena Est Terra.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

Random Quote

“Indeed, we may not hope for real Latin poetry any more, because Latin is now a dead language to all of us. However well a man may read, write, or even speak Latin now, it is always a foreign language to him, acquired artificially. It is no one’s mother tongue. Does a man ever write real poetry in an acquired language?”

— Rev’d Adrian Fortescue (d. 1923)

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