Get wise to the Epiphany.

The journey of the Magi and our own pilgrimages lead to the same insight: That God is everywhere, but especially in "little" places.

"WE THREE KINGS OF ORIENT ARE / BEARING gifts we traverse afar / Field and fountain, moor and mountain / Following yonder star...."

There weren't three. And they weren't kings. The names Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior got attached to the legend generations later. We don't know that one of them, or only one of them, is black. Much of what we think we know of the three figures standard to every manger scene is illusory, but that doesn't take away the magic of these characters in our religious imagination. Their arrival into the Christmas story--better late than never, on January 6--makes the event feel more complete. The Magi bring more than gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They bring our awe and homage to the little king on the throne of straw.

Consider what scripture tells us about them. Only Matthew mentions the numberless group of foreigners who come in pursuit of a star and its message. The word Magi comes from a Persian name for the priests of Zoroastrianism, a wisdom cult that found meaning in astrology, dreams, and other mystical dimensions. Practitioners of magic, as we know from elsewhere in the Bible, are frowned upon in salvation history but not presented as phonies. For one who follows the God of Israel, the power of God is supposed to be sufficient and no personal power is to be hoarded.

Yet the Magi are not presented negatively for their "Eastern" persuasion. We learn from their journey that even foreign religions will acknowledge the Christ child as king. Their fidelity to the sign in the heavens, and their attentiveness to dreams, show them to be good at their art, as well as open to sources of wisdom outside of their own provenance.

Because they bring three gifts to the babe of Bethlehem, Western tradition presumed there were three Wise Men. Because naming nameless figures in the Bible became popular in the early centuries of the church, it wasn't long before the three had names, were identified with the three known continents (Asia, Europe, and Africa), the three ages of human life (young, middle-aged, and old), and were called descendants of the three sons of Noah (Shem, Ham, and Japheth, responsible for repopulating the earth after the flood). They came to be known as kings, partly because they achieved an audience with King Herod, and also by association with prophetic visions (see Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72, both of which are read on the feast of the Epiphany).

Meanwhile, Armenian and Syrian traditions numbered the Magi at 12, a popular and significant biblical number, and conceived names for these 12, not to mention accompanying lineages and stories. It wasn't long before their legend was extended to include chronicles of their journey before and after Bethlehem, as well as stories about their deaths. Artists, too, contributed to the story with their delight in painting, sculpting, and drawing the Wise Men, and soon they became an indispensable part of the Christmas story. Legend contributed the story of Saint Helena, mother of Constantine, finding the skulls of the three in the Holy Land, which eventually found rest in the cathedral at Cologne, prized relics to this day.

But perhaps the reason we are fascinated by these wise ones throughout history is that we bear their ambition in our hearts as well. We search for Christ across time and in many lands, looking for signs of him in our world. We travel bearing our own gifts, awkward and insufficient to present perhaps, but valuable because they are all we have. We embellish their tale with echoing legends of the drummer boy or the littlest angel, also gift-bearers to the crib, only their gifts are humble, more like the presents children exchange. This is reassuring to us who do not have gold and myrrh ready at hand. Though we come to present no more than ourselves, our little pat on the drum, we hope it will be deemed enough.

And where does their star lead us today in our journey to find the Christ made flesh? It stops above the homeless shelter where mothers still carry their children to get out of the cold. It shines above the migrant workers, our present-day shepherds who do our menial work out of view, without our thanks or respect. The star rises above travelers and those who are on the inward journey, soul-searching and asking questions in the dark. And it climbs above those in our culture who would murder innocence for profit, though they do not see it nor comprehend its meaning.

As we follow the star, however, it is important not to get sidetracked by what seems most lustrous, like Herod's palace. When the Magi arrived in Israel, they went to Jerusalem first, because it was a great city and they presumed the king they sought would be found there. Instead, they encountered his greatest enemy. It is equally possible for us to decide in advance where Jesus might be found, and to ignore the star in favor of our prejudices.

All travel, by its nature, involves leaving the safe, known, and comfortable. Travel invites us to take a risk and enter the unknown, which is out of our control. As we travel, we are invited to change along with the new sights and new understanding we receive. People who leave home do not return the same. It is not possible to enter the same river twice, as the proverb tells us.

I TOOK A JOURNEY TO THE HOLY LAND ONE JANUARY ON A study tour, looking for Jesus. We had planned to get to the city of David for the feast of the Epiphany, and I anticipated having a religious experience there, the "epiphany" of a lifetime. When we arrived in Bethlehem, we were taken to the church built over the site where it is said that Jesus was born. I knelt at the very spot where Pope John Paul II recently was, a small monstrance-shaped plaque on the floor identifying the precise position of the manger, if you believe the guide. With the magnificent church embracing you on all sides, the dimmed lights quieting the crowds to reverence, your heart pounds with the idea that you might be kneeling on the ground where Mary rested and Joseph kept vigil. Awe under those circumstances is not optional.

And then you regain your footing, and the guide offers to take you to another place where it is purported that Jesus may have been born. At this point, you can't help but feel a little hornswoggled. Some distance from the grand church, you come upon a rather drab-looking cave. There is nothing there, no one selling postcards and olive carvings of manger scenes, no gold engravings, nothing to mark one spot as being holier than another.

But somehow, as we rested in this cave where one could imagine animals being herded out of the rain, I felt something I didn't expect. It was not institutionally arranged adoration, but humility at the littleness of the scene. It was not an important place. It was an empty hollow carved out of a cliff by the elements, with maybe a little help from landowners through the centuries. There were wisps of straw on the dirt, and the place had an overall careless look. I picked up a stone and put it in my pocket. I wanted to remember that Jesus often appeared in irrelevant places like this.

On the way through the Holy Land, one gets used to having one's sense of wonder forced. After a while, it was hard to get excited when being told that Jesus definitely taught next to this wall or prayed underneath this tree. Too many people were trying to sell me too many things for me to be sure their testimony wasn't slightly tainted. Pilgrims learn that, along with reverence, comes the wisdom that one spot is no more sacred than another, and that we might as well fall on our knees everywhere in the world, for God is here as much as there.

Once in Jerusalem, we headed to the stone structure that historians claim as the house of the high priest in the first century. Here Caiaphas lived, Annas delivered his decisions, and prisoners would have been kept overnight. In the room at the bottom of the house, carved out of the earth with all the smell and feel of a dungeon, we were lowered, one at a time, to experience the dark, airless, horror of the place. As I spent my long minute in utter darkness, my hair stood on end with the sensation of being buried alive. "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" I wondered if Jesus felt this fear and more, knowing that the place he would be taken next would be worse by far.

AFTER 17 DAYS TOURING FROM TOWN TO TOWN AND MOUNtain to mountain, Jesus seemed most real to me in the humble peace of the cave in Bethlehem--and the wringing fear of the cell in the high priest's house. Was it because he had been in those very places and his essence perceptibly remained? Or was I simply being reminded that, in all the realms between peace and horror, Christ is truly present? The wandering of the Magi and my own journey seemed to arrive at a similar conclusion, at least according to legend. It is said that the Wise Men continued to seek the one they had found and acknowledged, down through the years, until their deaths. One glimpse of the Christ child is not enough. One has to become not only an observer or an admirer, but a follower.

Realistically, we cannot claim Christ as our king, offer an hour's homage, and walk away. Having come all this way to call him king, we now must live as though that's true. It might be more convenient to leave a few gifts, our card perhaps, and head back toward the land from which we came. But then our epiphany proves itself false. Epiphany means "God revealed." If we have seen God in that shivering child, if the Holy One lives among us as the least of us, then that changes everything. There is no going back. All the world has become new.

Are we wise enough to understand what we see, what this feast of the Magi's vision asks us to consider. And are we courageous enough to live it out in our lives? Innocence is still endangered as our society is flooded with empty images of greed, recreational sex, and violence. The poor still lack a champion as funds are cut and diverted to corporate handouts and military spending. Children are still at risk--in the womb, in houses that are not homes, in schools that cannot teach, on streets that are not safe. The Christ child isn't waiting simply for our homage. If we come to bend our knee, we must stay to become disciples.

ALICE CAMILLE, writer and adjunct faculty member at the Franciscan School of Theology at Berkeley. She is the author of Seven Last Words (ACTA, 1999) and a collaborator on the homily series, "This Sunday's Scripture," available through Twenty-Third Publications.