August 17, 2025

Question 1

What became of the gifts of the Magi?

Answer 1

The passage that mentions the visit of the Magi, the gifts they offered baby Jesus and their departure is Matthew 2:1-12. There we read that they presented gold, frankincense and myrrh. Those gifts had deeper scriptural symbolism embedded in the Old Testament. Gold symbolizes Christ's kingship, as it is a precious metal fit for a king (cf. Isaiah 60:3, 6). Frankincense (known simply as incense) was and is still used in worship, pointing to divinity (cf. Exodus 30:23-33). By offering frankincense, the Magi were acknowledging Jesus as God. Myrrh is an oil for consecration and burial. This signified Jesus’ humanity and foreshadowed his passion and death as reflected in John 2:18-22; Hebrews 5-7. Since the seventh century, the Western Church has recognized these three Magi by the names Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar. Pope Saint Gregory the Great applied moral significance to their gifts and taught that they call us to offer Christ wisdom (gold), prayer (frankincense) and self-sacrifice (myrrh) in our lives.

That is as far as the gifts given offered by the Magi are concerned. There is no mention of what happened to those gifts afterwards.

Question 2

Do we know that St. Peter’s wife was alive, as in “The Chosen”?

Answer 2

The New Testament doesn’t mention St. Peter’s wife at all. We only know that at some point St. Peter was married because in Matthew 8:14-14 and Luke 4:38-39 there is mention of Peter’s mother-in-law. It is inconceivable for one who never married to have a mother-in-law. Although Peter’s mother-in-law is mentioned as sick, we never hear of her daughter attending to her. It is therefore possible that either Peter’s wife was just momentarily away at the time Jesus cured her mother from the fever or she was completely out of the picture, as in having been dead by then. Since no clarification was made about this matter in the New Testament, the Church allows freedom to accept either that Peter’s wife was alive or that he was a widower during Jesus’ ministry. No official dogma exists on this matter.

According to the fact that St. Peter had a mother-in-law, we can conclude that he also had a wife who was alive until some point. As to whether she was still alive when Peter became an apostle of Jesus as depicted in The Chosen, that has no specific scriptural basis. Like it is the case in every film, the makers of The Chosen took extra liberties with the information they had from the Bible and creatively came up with such social interactions to paint the picture that even the people of Jesus’ time lived normal lives.

Question 3

What are we to think about Pope Francis approving “blessings” for gay couples?

Answer 3

The kind of “blessings” you are referring to seems to be what was the gist of a document, Fiducia Supplicans – Supplicating Trust, also subtitled as: “On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings”. That document was issued by the Holy See’s Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) and was released on December 18, 2023. If there had ever existed a list of controversial documents put out by the DDF, there is no doubt that Fiducia Supplicans would make the top three. Its basic emphasis was to point out that people who are in same-sex relationship can be blessed, but without making it look like the Church is approving of their relationship. Although endorsed by Pope Francis, that document never taught anything new but instead stirred up unnecessary controversy because, according to anybody who knows how the Church has always conducted blessings, there was is no instruction to deny a blessing to anybody because of that person’s immoral life. Nowhere in the instructions about how to confer blessings is it decreed that if people present themselves for a blessing they are required to state their sexual orientation prior to receiving a blessing. So, the controversy developed because the document was attempting to solve a nonexistent problem and for that reason, it was viewed as a veiled approval of same-sex relationships, since the emphatic justification of such blessings was redundant and as a result, rendered the document superfluous. The authors seemed to have wanted to have it both ways: to normalize same-sex relationships while at the same time upholding Church teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman. Logically, those are contradictory beliefs and cannot coexist without creating confusion because their coexistence would violate what is known as the “principle of non-contradiction” which says that two statements opposed to each other cannot both be true at the same time. So, the document indeed inadvertently created confusion and didn’t appeal to those who are convinced of the veracity of the traditional teaching about marriage and sexuality.

Consequently, after the uproar against the document by many bishops, priests and laity alike, the Vatican’s communication office put out the following statement on January 4, 2024: “With the Declaration Fiducia supplicans issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved by Pope Francis, it will be possible to bless same-sex couples but without any type of ritualization or offering the impression of a marriage. The doctrine regarding marriage does not change, and the blessing does not signify approval of the union.” This was an effort to assuage those who suspected a nefarious plan to give the impression that same-sex relationships comprise another form of marriage, but it was damage control in which the explanation given was simply common doctrinal teaching which everybody who knows about the Church’s teaching concerning marriage was already aware of but was being threatened by the document itself. The communications office was trying to put out fire which didn’t need to be ignited in the first place.

Needless to say, the document has never become binding but just created confusion. For that reason, those who were opposed to Church teaching about marriage and sexuality found encouragement in the document since it seemed to confirm them into rebellion, while those who are faithful to Church teaching in those areas saw contradiction and disregarded the document. For that reason, Fiducia Supplicans is not taken seriously by those who hold the age-old Church teaching about blessings. We still bless everybody who asks for a blessing without first considering their sexual orientation or their moral lives in any other way, since that has never been a prerequisite for conferral of a blessing.

For more comprehensive answers, please check out two different prior issues:
* Question 5 which was asked in the bulletin of October 22, 2023 and in answering it I relied on the age-old teaching of the Catholic Church about blessings, as the DDF would later do in January 2024 after the backlash created by the issuance of Fiducia Supplicans. The question was, “If a priest is ordered by the pope to give a blessing to same-sex couples, is he obliged to do so? Why or why not?” You can look up that question and the answer via https://sponsors.bonventure.net/pdfs/2166/2023-10-22.pdf
* Additionally, Question 7 in the bulletin of May 5, 2024 reads, “Can you please clarify what the pope was saying in blessing gay couples? Many people take this out of context.” This is under the link: https://sponsors.bonventure.net/pdfs/2166/2024-05-05.pdf
Hopefully those additional explanations will be useful.

Question 4

“And upon her head was a crown of twelve stars”. What do each of the twelve stars represent?

Answer 4

We read about that “crown of twelve stars” upon the head of a nameless woman in the book of Revelation. So, it seems like you are referencing Revelation 12:1 where those twelve stars upon the head of that unnamed woman are mentioned. Although the woman in question remains nameless, as the story goes on, every indication points to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of a son who would rule over all the nations (cf. verse 5) and his kingdom would last forever as had been predicted prior in Revelation 11:15. This is the very reason why honest biblical scholars, Catholic and non-Catholics alike, have concluded that the woman in question is Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ who is the only one who rules over all nations and whose kingdom will last forever. No any other mother has ever given birth to such a son. Now, regarding the implication of the twelve stars as per your question:

We never get any explicit explanation of what exactly the twelve starts symbolize, but some theological reflection has been done harkening back into the Old Testament and the book of Revelation itself and three symbolisms have been laid out.
First, the twelve stars in Revelation 12:1 symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel and also the twelve apostles, representing the fullness of God’s people.
Secondly, as pointed out earlier, this imagery connects to Mary, the woman clothed with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, signifying her queenship as Queen Mother in the Davidic tradition. It is upon this basis that we get the fourth and the fifth mysteries of the Rosary. The twelve stars, therefore, recall the royal crown, affirming Mary’s role as the mother of the King, Jesus Christ, the King of Kings (cf. Revelation 19:13, 16).
Thirdly, the twelve stars also echo the Church’s foundation on the apostles, highlighting Mary’s intimate connection to the Church’s mission.
To sum up in view of these theological reflections, the twelve stars reveal the Blessed Virgin Mary’s exalted dignity and her role in salvation history as the Queen of Heaven.

Question 5

In the early days of the Church, there were few, it any priests around. We know that Mass was said, and bread and wine were shared. Who consecrated them so they became the Body and Blood of our Lord?

Answer 5

If we go by the current understanding of the priesthood, all of us can agree with you that there were no priests in the early days of the Church. However, there were priests although they were never trained in the seminaries, were never ordained in cathedrals, never wore clerical garb and never lived in parish rectories as is the case today. How so? It has been a centuries long traditional belief that on the evening before his crucifixion (which has come to be known as Holy Thursday), Jesus Christ did not only institute the Eucharist but also ordained the apostles as the first priests. For with the words of Jesus Christ accompanying the institution of the Eucharist – “Do this in memory of me” – Christ was charging the apostles to be what a priest is – another Christ (alter Christus in Latin), uttering the words of Jesus over bread and wine to be transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ. On the basis of this understanding, there has never been a period when the Church never had priests. Their way of training, their clerical garb, the mode of ordination, their living arrangements and their place in society have changed according to the needs of their milieu, but priests have been around since the time of the apostles. Therefore, even when the celebration of the Eucharist referred to as “the breaking of bread” in the book of Acts was carried out in people’s houses, caves and other unconventional places, it would still be valid because of being presided over by the apostles who were the first priest, then later by those they ordained priest and on and on…