La Croix International, France
January 5, 2019 Saturday
A little Russian king
Gospel reflection for the Epiphany
Who were these famous Magi who infuse the nativity with a little of the atmosphere of One Thousand and One Nights? One meaning of the word “magos” could indicate that they were Persian priests. Or were they magicians, soothsayers, sages, or Babylonian astrologers? Some suggest that they were religious propagandists, even charlatans.
In the Gospels, only Matthew describes them in detail, careful to show how they are connected to the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy: "Nations will come to your light/and kings to the brightness of your dawn." (Isiah 60:3)
There is also Psalm 72: "May the kings of Tarshish and of distant shores bring tribute to him. May the kings of Sheba and Seba present him gifts." (Ps. 72: 10)
From as early as the second century, in Syria, Armenia and the Arab countries, the apocryphal gospels demonstrate great powers of imagination. The Armenian Gospel of the Infancy says that they were kings, that there were three brothers, each rulers of different kingdoms. The first, Melkon (who became Melchior in the West) ruled over the Persians, the second, Balthazar, ruled the Indians, and the third, Caspar, ruled the Arab kingdom.
The Armenian Gospel delights in describing the gifts, the procession, the crowns worn by the Magi, their departure from Persia accompanied by the sound of a cockerel crowing, the arrival in Jerusalem at dawn, the conversations between Mary and Joseph as well as the gifts of Jesus’ swaddling that the kings took back to their countries as relics.
The story doesn’t stop there. In the eighth century, the great English Benedictine scholar, Bede the Venerable, described the Magi with such precision that you would think he had met them the night before at the office of Compline. Here, Melchior is made “an old man with white hair and long beard who gifted gold to the Lord as to a king.” The second, Gaspar, “young and beardless and ruddy complexioned … honored Him as God by his gift of incense, an oblation worthy of divinity." As for the third, Balthazar, "black-skinned and heavily bearded … by his gift of myrrh he testified to the Son of Man who was to die for our salvation."
In the 12th century, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, also a doctor of theology, enhanced the story, adding that it was the gold that finally lifted the Virgin from her sorrow, that incense was used to sanctify the stables and that myrrh was used a medicine to cure the child of his ailments.
Over the centuries, and up to our own times, literature has enjoyed revisiting this fanciful tale, including the tradition of the fourth king, unmentioned in the Gospel, who arrived too late at Christmas and was still a pilgrim 33 years later. I am greatly moved by Edgard Schafer’s Christmas tale written almost 50 years ago, in which this fourth king, a minor king of Russia, encounters many obstacles and loses all his gifts, and arrives just in time at the foot of the cross to offer his heart to the Lord.
This fourth king is also the king of Epiphany … he who finds the charm (known as the “fève” in France) in the Epiphany cake, the galette des rois, and wears the golden paper crown. And there is yet another tradition, in keeping with the Eucharist, that the youngest child is the fourth king, sometimes called "The Little King" or "The Sun Child,” who hides under the table and chooses who will have which slice, in complete innocence.