The Interview, a regular feature of The Catholic New World, is an in-depth conversation with a person whose words, actions or ideas affect today’s Catholic. It may be affirming of faith or confrontational. But it will always be stimulating.

This issue, The Catholic New World talks with Bethlehem’s Last Wise Man.

Among the most familiar figures around any Christmas display are the Wise Men, or as Scripture calls them, kings and “astrologers from the East.” In the traditions of the Latin church, there are three, from the three gifts given the Christ Child. Though Scripture doesn’t, we’ve given them names and even a diversity of race: Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar.

In other Christian cultures the numbers are far less important; some traditions have as many as 20. But important they are, rich in story and symbol.

In recent Christmas issues of The Catholic New World, The Interview feature has focused on an important character in our holiday traditions. First, there was Santa Claus himself. Then came an interview with the donkey who carried Mary, heavy with child, up from Nazareth through Jerusalem to Bethlehem. That was a mighty task for a small but significant bit player in the Christmas drama.

Last year, we chatted with Melancholy Holly, the Sad Little Christmas Wreath who had quite a tale to tell, hanging out in the cold while her family celebrated warm and toasty inside.

This year, The Catholic New World caught up with the Last Wise Man, a character who’s been overlooked in the retelling of the Christmas story.

When we found him, the Last Wise Man was sitting on a rock on the road outside Bethlehem. Clearly he was tired—and out of shape, huffing and puffing from his journey following the star. And he looked more than a little tattered and worse for the wear.

The Catholic New World: All the action’s going on up the road at the manger; you can just see it from here. Aren’t you going?

Last Wise Man: Can’t. Got here too late. The other guys got all the best seats. Best gifts, too.

TCNW: Best gifts?

LWM: Gold. Frankincense. Myrrh. Lost mine back there a ways (gesturing toward Jerusalem.) Got robbed by a pack of thieves; no respect for a Wise Man these days. Can’t very well greet the Savior, the Messiah, with no gift, now can I?

TCNW: This is beginning to sound like the story of the Little Drummer Boy.

LWM: Who?

TCNW: You know, the boy who showed up at the Nativity scene with no gift but his drum, par-ump-pump-pump-pum? He’s in all the stories.

LWM: Never heard of him. Just camels and shepherds and a young couple and one very special kid.

TCNW: Must be a different version.

LWM: Besides, I’ve never been so scared in all my life as I was a little while ago.

TCNW: The robbers, right?

LWM: Nope, a whole lot worse. I was sitting here, catching my breath and wondering how I was going to face the other Wise Men on the caravan back home. All of a sudden, everything changed.

TCNW: Changed?

LWM: The buildings got bigger, there were strange lights in the road and things started movin’ real fast. Great metal monsters belching fire, people screaming, sticks that roared like a stampede of camels and spewed swarms of deadly buzzing bees. Lot of people hurt, dying. It was horrible.

TCNW: You must have had a glimmer of the future of this place; Bethlehem at the beginning of the Third Millennium. No, it’s not nice, people hating and killing each other.

LWM: How come? In that manger over there is supposed to be the child of peace. What I saw were people dying. I ducked under this rock just in time to avoid getting hewn in two by someone who must not have liked my robes and turban.

TCNW: Well, you do look like … never mind. But, yeah, there’s been a lot of that lately.

LWM: Who was fighting?

TCNW: People like you; people like me. Not just over land and water, but over … well … over that child. Or at least what he stands for.

LWM: Stands for? I’ll tell you what he stands for. And I ought to know; I’ve been following his star for months. He’s supposed to bring peace, bring reconciliation. That’s what the other guys’ gifts are supposed to show: Gold, for his kingship; frankincense, symbolic of his priesthood and myrrh, the spice of death and burial. He’s the savior of the world. Doesn’t the world want to be saved?

TCNW: Not always, I guess.

LWM: I’ll say. Want to see the scorch marks on my beard and the holes in my robe?

TCNW: So what are you going to do, just sit here?

LWM: I told you, fella, no gift, no visit to the stable.

TCNW: Back to that again, eh? Well, you could …

LWM: And no drum either, so don’t get any stupid ideas. Look, (digging around in a linty pocket of his robe) empty.

TCNW: You call yourself a Wise Man, don’t you? So, be wise.

LWM: Hmmm. I guess you’re right. OK, follow me

TCNW: Where’re we going?

LWM: Over there, to the stable.

TCNW: But you said ...

LWM: I know what I said. Follow me anyway.

We walked toward the stable. The Last Wise Man was right: no little drummer boy, just shepherds and barnyard animals, Mary and Joseph and the Babe, dressed in swaddling clothes. The other Wise Men, finished with their assigned task, were already on their way back home, bypassing Jerusalem and King Herod.

Clear, bright light from the odd star overhead flooded the cramped stable, casting strange shadows as animals and men knelt in wonderment. Then the Last Wise Man did something strange. As he approached the child, he reached up and with a gnarled but strong hand snapped off a piece of that streaming starlight. It was just a small piece, but enough to bathe him in an unearthly brightness.

At the child’s side, he carefully tucked the chunk of starlight into the manger. Now the light poured upward, rivaling even the glow of the star the Wise Men had followed for those many months, searching and seeking this night, this stable, this child.

Finally, the Last Wise Man turned away and we walked silently back to the rock where we had met. But something definitely was different.

TCNW: (Whispering) What did you do up there?

LWM: This world won’t accept peace imposed from beyond itself, even when ordained by God. It has to come from within. Judging from what I saw in my vision of the future a little while ago, your world still has much to learn. I tried to give it a little help.

TCNW: What kind of help?

LWM: That starlight. It was the light of tolerance, of acceptance of difference, of color, of gender, of class, of wealth or lack of it, even of religion.

TCNW: Will it work?

LWM: I don’t know. But I know this: If it doesn’t, your world—made by God, taught by God, so loved by God—could chew itself up from within, despite the love of that Lord up there in the stable.

TCNW: Yes, but the future doesn’t seem all that much brighter now ….

LWM: True. But there was something else in that piece of starlight: Hope—eternal, powerful hope.

TCNW: All that in a piece of starlight? It sounds, well, hokey. How do you know all that?

LWM: You called me a Wise Man, didn’t you? And for your sake, I truly hope I’m NOT the Last Wise Man. This world will need so many more in the millennia to come.

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