Thought for the Day – 12 January – Meditations with Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)
Meditations for Christmastide
“The Holy Infancy”
From “The Devout Year”
By Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)
“Their Gifts (2) Frankincense”
+1. The offering of Frankincense to anyone has always been regarded, by the common consent of mankind, as an acknowledgment of inherent Deity. When the Christians were commanded to throw a grain of incense on the altar of Jupiter or Minerva, it was in acknowledgment of their divinity. The Magi, then, by this offering to Christ of Incense, were the first Gentile witnesses to His Divinity. They made thereby, an implicit Act of Faith in His Godhead and proved the honour they paid Him to be that highest honour which belongs to God alone.
+2. Frankincense is, moreover, a symbol of all which is sweetest and most fragrant.
What is so sweet to Jesus, as the complete offering of ourselves to Him, implied in the homage paid to Him as God! Jesus, my God, my all, I offer Thee my heart, my soul, myself!
+3. Frankincense is the material symbol under which prayer is indicated in Holy Scripture.
In the Apocalypse, the Angel offers the prayers of the Saints in a golden censer and there continually appears, from earth, the cloud of prayers as a cloud of Incense. Among them, my prayers arise. Are they such as will be fragrant and pleasing to God?
AnaStpaul 