Sarah stared at her phone on January 2, scrolling through abandoned New Year’s resolutions from years past. ‘Meditate daily.’ ‘Read Scripture.’ ‘Find clarity.’ The words felt hollow now, like promises made to a stranger. She had started the year feeling spiritually dry, going through the motions at Mass, wondering if she’d lost something essential. Her prayer life felt like shouting into a void. She kept thinking about the Magi… those ancient seekers who followed a star across deserts and mountains. “Where is my star?” she whispered. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for anymore.”
The Magi’s Journey — Your Journey
The Magi weren’t certain. That’s what we forget. These weren’t casual travellers following a convenient light to a nearby destination. They were spiritual seekers who committed years of their lives to following something they didn’t fully understand — a star that appeared in the night sky, beckoning them toward mystery.
From a Carmelite perspective, the Magi embody the soul’s deepest longing: the search for God in the darkness. They studied the heavens, discerned a pattern, and made a radical choice. They left everything familiar — their observatories, their libraries, even their reputations — to follow a light that gave them no guarantees. The journey required sacrifice: months crossing hostile territories, depleting their resources, risking their lives. They didn’t know where the star would lead. They only knew they had to follow.
And where did it lead? Not to Herod’s palace with its marble columns and political power. Not to the temple with its religious authority. The star stopped over a stable in Bethlehem; a humble, obscure place that could be easily missed. The King of kings wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a feeding trough.
The star doesn’t lead to certainty… it leads to presence.
The Magi brought three gifts, each heavy with meaning. Gold acknowledged Christ’s kingship, the recognition that this child would reign. Frankincense honoured his divinity, the acknowledgment of God made flesh. Myrrh anticipated his suffering, the bitter truth that incarnation leads to crucifixion. The gifts they brought with them were prophetic, costly, true.
As we enter 2026, these questions confront us: What gifts are we bringing? What are we willing to offer in this new year?
Finding Your Interior Star
Teresa of Ávila offers us a map for this interior journey. In her work, The Interior Castle, she describes the soul as a magnificent dwelling with seven mansions, each one drawing us deeper into union with God. And she insists that your star is already shining inside the first mansion. You don’t have to achieve anything, prove anything, or become more spiritual to find it. The light is already there, waiting for your attention.
The tragedy, Teresa observed, is that most people live their entire lives in the courtyard outside the castle, never entering their own souls. They are so busy, so distracted, so convinced they need to be somewhere else that they never cross the threshold into their own depths. They search everywhere except the one place where God is already waiting.
How do we find our interior star? Teresa and John of the Cross offer three essential questions for discernment:
- Where does your deep desire point? Not your surface wants but that persistent longing beneath all your other longings. Teresa believed desire isn’t the enemy of spiritual life; it is the compass. “God gave us desires to lead us home,” she wrote. Your deepest desire is your star.
- What brings you alive in prayer? When do you feel most present to God’s presence? Perhaps in silence, or in nature, or in liturgy, or in serving others. Perhaps in reading Scripture or in journaling or in spiritual conversation. Notice when prayer stops being an obligation and becomes encounter. That aliveness is your star illuminating the path.
- Where do you sense God’s gentle pull? Not the loud demands of ambition or fear but that persistent nudge toward something truer. John of the Cross called it “the gentle breeze,” the subtle movement of the Spirit that does not force but invites. That is your star.
Following Without Arriving
Carmelite wisdom teaches us that the journey is the destination. We are not following our star to finally arrive at some perfect state of enlightenment or achievement. We are following it because the following itself is where we meet God.
Teresa’s constant refrain throughout her writings is “beginning again.” Even after her mystical marriage, even after founding seventeen reformed convents, even in her final days, she saw herself as a beginner. This was not false humility but radical freedom. If you are always beginning, you can never fail. You can only start again.
John of the Cross takes this further with his paradoxical teaching on nada (nothingness). His sketch of Mount Carmel shows the path to union with God marked repeatedly with this word. Nada, Nada, Nada. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. This is the recognition that emptiness makes space for God. It means we do not grasp or cling or demand. We follow.
So, 2026 isn’t a destination. It is not the year you finally get it all together, achieve your goals, or arrive at spiritual maturity. It is twelve months of following… sometimes clearly, often in confusion. Twelve months of beginning again.
Teresa reformed 17 convents. She was 67 when she died, still traveling dusty roads. Still beginning again.
7-Day Epiphany Star Practice:
- Each morning: Ask yourself, “What star am I following today?” Is it ambition? Fear? Love? God’s gentle pull?
- Pay attention: When do you feel most alive during the day? Most yourself? Most present? Those moments are breadcrumbs showing you your path.
- Evening reflection: “Did I follow my star or someone else’s?” Notice without judgment. Just see clearly.
- End of 7 days: Write down what you noticed. What patterns emerged? What surprised you? What do you want to remember?
- One action: What is one concrete step toward your star this month? Not ten steps. One. And take it.
At the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS), our programmes like the Spiritual Direction Formation and the School of Prayer, aren’t about giving you a map or telling you where to go. We don’t give you a star. You already have one, shining in the first mansion of your soul. We simply walk with you as you learn to see it, trust it, follow it. We companion you on the journey toward the humble stable where God waits, wrapped not in glory but in your own surrendered heart.