Stars are amazing-not the people who claim star-status because of their work in sports or entertainment-

but the stars that populate the universe. Most are between one and ten billion years old, a time span

impossible to comprehend. Other than the sun, the closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, about

twenty-five trillion miles away, another calculation that is impossible to comprehend. The exponential

numbers scientists use when working with stars, whether it is age, distance, weight, composition, luminosity,

or any other characteristic, race beyond our everyday calculations of hundreds and thousands. Stars are just too big for us humans.

No wonder Matthew's infancy narrative included a star as the sign for the newborn king. Everything

about this child's birth seemed unimportant: born in Bethlehem instead of the big city, Jerusalem; unknown

to the important people of the day; the pregnant woman taken into Joseph's home quietly so as not to cause scandal; a quiet, unremarkable birth in an unimportant country in the empire.

But then there's that star! Big, shining, revealing that there is more to this event than meets the eye. Visitors come from afar, and upset the balance of power as they seek the child who would be king. Epiphany is the manifestation of Christ to the world. And the star shows him to be who he really is-king of the universe and Lord of all. So it shouldn't seem so strange to us that Matthew would point out one of those incomprehensible entities in the night sky as the signifier of the One who is beyond all human understanding. What is remarkable is that that One came to

be one of us so that we could understand him.

Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, "Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw

his star at its rising and have come to do him homage." - Mt 2:1b-2