In the Gospels we find the story of the three Magi, coming from the East and laying their gifts at the crib of the newborn Jesus. The gifts were not practical: baby food, diapers, blankets. They were symbolic. What do they symbolize?

At one level, they symbolize, as we have been classically taught: kingship, divinity, and humanity. But there are other levels of meaning as well. Gold can be seen as a gift that resources the young child for the things he will need in life; Frankincense can be seen as honoring the unique dignity of his person; and Myrrh can be seen as reminding him that he will die one day.

Now, these are three gifts which every parent needs to give a child, namely, resources for the things the child needs in order grow: a pride in the child that honors his or her dignity; and a reminder (in whatever form this might take) which makes and keeps the child aware that one day he or she will die. These are the gifts from the Magi: we are resourced, we are honored, and we are reminded that one day we will die.

As children, we yearn for the first two gifts, the gold and the frankincense, but we resist the last gift, the myrrh, a reminder that we are mortal, a reminder we don’t want but very much need.

Growing up, my father and mother gave me these three gifts: gold, the resources I needed to live and grow, frankincense, a sense of my unique dignity, and myrrh, a sense that someday I will die, that this life isn’t all there is, that youth and health don’t last forever, and that my life decisions need always to be made against that horizon.

Growing up, I always resisted that last gift. I didn’t want to look at dead bodies at wakes or at funerals, and all talk of the fragility of life sent me scurrying from the room. I didn’t want to see or hear anything about death. For me, this was morbid talk which blocked out sunshine and drained oxygen from a room.

But my parents, in all the good things they gave me and my siblings, never let us evade the myrrh. In all seasons, there were reminders of our mortality, of the fact that life was fragile and that death eventually awaited us. My father and mother weren’t cruel, sadistic, or particularly pessimistic; they just kept this awareness always in front of us, reminding us of what was real. All the while, I longed for Disneyland.

Perhaps in some of this they were not just influenced by their faith, but also from the Germanic culture from which they came, the culture that gave us Grimm’s Fairy Tales, that had a particular stoicism regarding death, and one which believed that adults weren’t doing children a favor by shielding them from the darker aspects of life.  But, in the end, this particular gift did come from their faith and was healthy and very much needed.

For all my resistance and attempts to evade this gift, it slipped through and slipped through so powerfully that I can in all honesty say that all the major decisions in my life have been made against its horizon. I would never have entered a religious community and become a priest, except for what this gift kept me always aware. I would not have persevered in my religious vows, except for this gift. Who would want to live the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, if there were no awareness of the reality of our mortality? Indeed, in any walk of life, who would have the strength to be faithful if there weren’t an awareness of this bigger horizon?

As a child I wasn’t grateful for my parents (and the Catholic culture they lived in) for never letting me forget that I was mortal, for symbolically bringing myrrh to my crib. But I look back now and realize that this was one of the greatest gifts they gave me – a gift I didn’t want but desperately needed.

I remember a particularly dark period in my childhood, the summer and fall when I was thirteen. In the space of five months, three young people I knew, two neighbors and a classmate, all died suddenly – two in accidents and one by suicide. Each of these deaths which took a young healthy person out of life was an assault on my youthful energies and dreams, all of which were predicated in walking in light, in sunshine, in health, in youth, and in a world where death wasn’t real. For six months I struggled with denial, in a painful and isolated teenage loneliness, trying to make peace with the brute fact of death. And that struggle branded my soul at a depth I still feel today. That summer I was, again, given the gift of myrrh, the blessing that comes from making peace with your own mortality.