Myrrh

Myrrh is a fragrant but bitter resin from a thorny tree, prized as perfume, as a component of the holy anointing oil, and as a spice for embalming the dead. Its sweetness carried always a note of bitterness, which gave it a fitting double role.

In the Song of Solomon myrrh is the perfume of love and delight, dripping from the beloved. Yet it was also the spice of death: it was offered to Jesus mingled with wine on the cross (which he refused), and Nicodemus brought “a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight” to prepare his body for burial.

Among the Magi’s gifts, myrrh was the strangest for a newborn — a burial spice laid beside a cradle. Christian readers have long seen in it a quiet prophecy: this King was born to die, and the fragrance of his sacrifice would be both bitter and sweet, the perfume of a love stronger than the grave.