NOTES for Mat 2:11-12
The Gospel of Matthew has preserved for us the tradition of Mary's being visited soon after Jesus' birth by those whom the Russian Synodal text calls, in a Slavic manner, volkhvy. The translators rendered the Greek word "magi," which we find in the original text of the Gospel, in this way.
Who were these "magi" from the East? To the east of the Roman Empire lay Persia, whose relations with Rome were far from friendly. The state religion of Persia in Gospel times was Zoroastrianism. The priests of this religion were called "magi" in Greek. However, these people did not practice magic in the modern sense of the word.
They were servants of the great good god named Ahura Mazda. And they waged war against his dark counterpart, who was called Angra Mainyu, or, in Greek pronunciation, Ahriman. They also awaited the one whom they called in their own language the Saoshyant, or Liberator. The one who was to come and lead on earth the great war of the forces of light against the forces of darkness. And perhaps some of these people knew that they were not the only ones awaiting the Saoshyant. That in the West, in a land called Judea by its inhabitants, there was a people awaiting the same one they awaited. Only they called him differently: the Anointed One, the Messiah. And there were people who dared to go into a hostile country to find the one for whom they had waited so long.
God led these people where they so wanted to go. And He gave them to see the One whom they so wanted to see. They left a royal gift for the divine Child and His Mother. Gold as an offering to a king. Frankincense for anointing to reign. And myrrh, the sacred herb of the Zoroastrians. Then they left as they had come. To wait for the day when the Saoshyant whom they had found would begin His war. Just as many Jews waited for this. Neither they nor the others knew that the war would be quite different from what they imagined. But the Kingdom too turned out not to be what most expected. And yet whoever wanted to receive it, received it. In the end, the point is what one strives for, not how one imagines it.