… Man gets to know God by meeting him, and vice versa he meets him in the act of getting to know him. He meets God when he opens up to him with the interior gift of his human “ego”, to accept God’s Gift and reciprocate it.
The Magi Kings, at the moment when they present themselves before the Child in his mother’s arms, accept in the light of the Epiphany the Gift of God Incarnate, his ineffable dedication to man in the mystery of the Incarnation. At the same time, “opening their treasures, they offered him gifts”; it is a question of the concrete gifts of which the evangelist speaks, but above all they open themselves up to him, with the interior gift of their own heart. And this is the real treasure they offer, of which the gold, incense and myrrh are only an exterior expression. The fruit of the Epiphany consists in this gift: they recognize God and they meet him.
Pope St John Paul II
General Audience, Wednesday 24 January 1979