As for the stars themselves: I guess I was just satisfied to know that they were up there doing what they were supposed to do while I was down here growing up.

I don’t know that I can pin-point the moment I got so "growed-up" that I stopped being a child at heart, but I can pin-point the moment I became a child again.

As I prepared to return to Madonna House permanently in the early 90s, I began thinking about the awesome night skies, which I had seen when I lived in poustinia there, far away from all city lights, in the 60s and 70s.

All of a sudden, I had a hankering for the stars, for the heavens. So when my friends wanted to give me a going away gift in the 90s, I asked for a good pair of binoculars.

Within a year, I was a child again, utterly amazed at God’s celestial creation.

I was dumbfounded by the speed of light: 186,000 miles a second! You knew that, didn’t you? But did you know that if a beam from a flashlight were powerful enough and could bend, it would travel around the earth seven times in one second! Seven times in one second! You can hardly turn a flashlight on that fast.

I got lost in the immensity of the Milky Way. Our little ol’ sun is only one of 200 billion suns, just in our own galaxy!

As if that weren’t enough, there are stars in our galaxy that are bigger than our entire solar system!

Light would have to travel for 100,000 years at 186,000 miles a second just to go from one edge of our puny little galaxy to the other! A hundred thousand years!

And the Milky Way is only one galaxy. There are literally billions of others!

I was excited about shooting stars again and couldn’t wait for those special seasons of meteor showers. I was even plotting the different phases of the rising sun and moon.

But sometimes I would just stand out in the middle of a field, look up at the three to five thousand stars we can sometimes see with the naked eye, and moan my amazement before God.

And now, even though my star-gazing has lessened, the stars continue to guide me. For they took me to a place in my heart that had been closed for far too many years. And it was right at the heart of my faith in Christmas.

The Christmas-feast of Epiphany, or as it is sometimes more popularly known, The Three Kings or The Wise Men, was never central to my celebration of the season as a child, as it is in so many other cultures.

It is more in focus here in Madonna House where we celebrate it in all of its Christmas splendour.

But in my star-gazing days, I became interested in the question: did an actual star guide the star-gazing Magi to Bethlehem?

I read up on all the scientific theories about the Bethlehem star—everything from planet conjunction to the birth of a supernova.

And then one night, as I stood looking up at the sky with all the theories about that star running about in my head, I heard a little voice inside say, "If you go in that direction, you may know all about the stars but you’ll never really see them as they are again. Don’t go there. Don’t go there."

Where then?

Well, I turned from the Bethlehem star theories and began to recall what I’d seen and read about the Three Kings in art, music, and literature.

As I went looking, I was shocked at how much I had already forgotten. I had completely forgotten those striking presentations of the Three Kings by Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Murillo, and Tissot, which had been pictured on so many of the Christmas cards I had received over the years.

I didn’t even remember that the Three Kings were in Lew Wallace’s famous book, Ben Hur, which I had read so many years ago.

Yet, when I read it this time, I discovered that the book began with the journey of the Three Wise Men, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, and ended with Balthazar as an old man wanting to look upon his King once more before he died.

So he journeyed all the way back to Jerusalem only to watch his King be crucified. Then Balthazar died there on Golgotha having heard the words of Jesus to the good thief, This day you will be with me in paradise (Lk 23:43).

I had forgotten that childlike faith-focus of Mr. Wallace’s book. Like so many adults, I only remembered the chariot race à la Charlton Heston in the 1959 screen version.

But you know what? This time when I read Ben Hur, Golgotha and Balthazar were much more real to me than Heston and the chariot race.

Likewise, I had also long forgotten all about that elegant short story by Henry van Dyke, "The Other Wise Man," who spent all his riches along the way helping people in need and never got to Bethlehem. He died hearing strange and blessed words from a voice he had never heard before: when I was naked you clothed me…Come…(Mt 25:36, 34).

But one of my most delightful memories about the Three Kings was from the opera by Carlo Menotti, Amahl and The Night Visitors.

This is a lovely musical presentation about the Three Kings and the night they spent at the house of a very poor widow and her crippled son on their way to Bethlehem.

The first time I heard it, it was like the stars. It touched that same place in my heart, that place where fact and fiction can meld with childlike faith and the Kingdom becomes real in a most unusual way.

So, in some inexplicable fashion, it is not hard to believe that there actually were three kings who really followed a star.

If they did, of course, their journey had a history. They must have met all sorts of people along the way. So why not Ben Hur? And why not return and try to see your King again before you die?

Why wouldn’t the Three Kings have met a poor widow and her crippled son? Why not take the boy with you to Bethlehem? Why wouldn’t that boy give his crutch to the Baby and be healed for doing so as he did in Menotti’s opera?

Scholars would say "No" and so would the astronomers. In their world, they are well within their rights. But not in the world of the Kingdom. There the same God who made all the stars and calls them each by name, is the primary author of the Bible including Matthew and Luke’s gospels where we read about the Magi. In that world anything is possible.

Yes, I think I stopped being a child when I had everything so figured out that there was no room for God to do the kinds of amazing, unexpected, unexplainable, miraculous, everyday-things that our God used to be well known for.

I think that all rationalistic-type thinking ceased for me a long time ago when I was just standing there looking up at all the stars one Christmas night, and it suddenly dawned on me (again?), "Oh my God!"

The Son of God came to earth through all the galaxies, past all the billions of stars in the Milky Way, to a place no bigger than a grain of sand in comparison to the whole universe. And he did it all in a flash faster than any possible theories about the speed of light. "Oh my God! Oh my God!"

Well, when we see such things in the stars, what can we do but get down on the ground like those three so-called mythical kings did when their star stood still over Bethlehem, and join them in doing homage to God—God, for whom traveling stars are nuthin’ in comparison to his coming to earth.

Of course the stars can move if the God who created them wants them to. And you can believe he did if you have the heart of a child like the three strange star-gazers from the East.

"Come on, Fr. McNulty, you don’t really believe all of that do you, not with all the celestial and biblical proofs?"

"Father! Father?"

"Aw, I think the poor guy’s lost his marbles. He’s just standing out there in the field looking up at the sky!"

"Could somebody please call 911?"