In the Christmas story, the wise men bring gifts to the Lord: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The gold is listed first, because it is the inmost - signifying good, e.g. the good that we do when we love the Lord and the neighbor.

The frankincense is next. It signifies rational truth, which is the set of true ideas that we know, not about external things like cars or cooking, but about what is really good, and what is really true.

These rational truths are built on earlier knowledges that we learn, before we have really made them our own. Those early knowledges about spiritual things - often learned in childhood - are represented by the myrrh.

In a way, these gifts are really a reciprocation. We can't actually give them to the Lord until the Lord has given them to us. We necessarily start out by learning and doing the Lord's law (myrrh). The Lord can then call up those memories to become rational truths (frankincense). Then, over time, and with effort, those truths can be transformed into good (gold). The wise men from the East had gone through this process of learning and becoming vessels that could receive truths and goods. They were able to perceive the Lord's birth, and find him, and bring gifts to him.

3513. 'And I will eat' means in that way making it its own. This is clear from the meaning of 'eating' as being made one's own, dealt with in 2187, 2343, 3168, 3503. It is made its own when, by means of forms of pleasantness and delight, truths, that is, cognitions of good and truth, are instilled into the natural; and when these truths are allied to the good in the natural, communication is effected with the truth and good of the rational and so with the rational itself. It is this communication that the expression 'being made one's own' is used to describe, for those truths belong to the rational within the natural. Indeed truths in the rational are related to those in the natural in the way that individual parts are related to their general wholes. It is well known that a general whole is the product of its individual parts and that without the individual parts no general whole can be produced. It is the general whole produced from the individual parts belonging to the rational that is manifested in the natural. And being a general whole it takes a different form, doing so according to the order of the individual constituent parts, and so according to the form that results. If it is the more specific and the consequent individual parts of celestial good and spiritual truth that give form to the general whole within the natural, then it is a celestial and spiritual form that is presented, and something of heaven is represented as a kind of image in the specific parts constituting the general whole. But if the more specific and the individual parts which give form to the general whole within the natural do not consist of good and truth but of evil and falsity, something of hell is in that case represented as a kind of image in the specific parts constituting the general whole.

[2] Such are the things meant by eating and drinking in the Holy Supper, where again eating and drinking mean making one's own; that is to say, 'eating' means making good one's own and 'drinking' making truth one's own. If good, that is to say, love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, gives form to the internal or rational man, and by way of this rational man gives form to a corresponding external or natural man, the person becomes in particular and in general an image of heaven, and therefore an image of the Lord. But if contempt for the Lord and for the good and truth of faith, and hatred towards the neighbour give form to the rational man, the person becomes in particular and in general an image of hell - the more so if at the same time he eats and drinks in a holy manner, for profanation then results. Consequently people who eat and drink worthily make eternal life their own, whereas those who do so unworthily make [eternal] death their own.