In mass late yesterday - the Catholic Church operates on the Jewish time system of beginning the day at sundown - it was the feast of the Epiphany, the great peak of the Christmas season recounting how the wise men from the east visited the baby Jesus and brought him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Christians call it Epiphany, meaning, manifestation, because it's the commemoration of how these foreign scholars were the first to recognize the baby Jesus as savior. The scholars, known as Magi, were so sure about this that they traveled more than a thousand miles following a mysterious star that appeared in the sky, which, their own holy books told them to follow to find a savior. For Christians, it's a startling story because those guys had to have some kind of hardcore faith, given the cost, rigors and danger of travel in those days, with just the chimerical specter of a star as guide, which, scholars to this day...(Read Full Post)