I know I’m a little out of step with the liturgical calendar, but I finally finished this painting, in oil, titled “Burning the Frankincense”.
I imagined Our Lady holding the frankincense, just after it was given into her hands by the Wise Men, and pondering this gift in her heart. My thought, during this meditation, was that she would have wanted to burn it, in worship and homage to her tiny son; yet it was, somehow, a very private matter and a great priviledge of hers and of St. Joseph to burn the frankincense.
Why frankincense? The myrrh was safely kept, kept for the day of death, for the time when Our Lady would use it in anointing Him, the invisible scent of a Pieta. The gold? I do not know, perhaps it was a timely gift for use in escape and for life in Egypt. But the frankincense, when should this be used?
Frankincense, like myrrh, is made from the sap of a desert tree. It was so rare and expensive, that it was used almost exclusively for the shrines and temples of the ancient world, and incorporated into the rituals surrounding the Holy of Holies. Thus it was a powerful sign, through the hands of the Kings, that here was not a mortal King only, but here was Divinity.
In my imagination, the Kings give Our Lady the frankincense encased in a jade censer, or burner, along with some charcoal tablets, pressed and made for the purpose of burning the frankincense granules, or pebbles, easily. Our Lady and St. Joseph would probably not have been expert censer-starters, so perhaps they would have been shy for this reason as well, from doing this in the evening when anyone might have been around.
I picture them staring intently at the incense just starting to burn, as St. Joseph holds his cloak over as a ‘tent’ to catch the fragrant smoke. He also hides the scene, much as he was called to do as Our Lord’s human protector during the hidden years of childhood. This spark, this tiny, incandescent moment of lighted worship, both in the physical and metaphysical sense; this instant when, if one were looking with eyes of faith and love, one was allowed to see God laying in a crib, encircled by His Mother and Foster Father- holds greater beauty than all the evil and darkness of the world.
