German-American Illustrator Fritz Eichenberg created the image I've chosen this week for the Feast of the Epiphany, a wood engraving of the Adoration of the Magi (with a difference) to commemorate the United Nation's International Year of the Child in 1979. Eichenberg has recast Joseph, Mary, and the Christ Child as Vietnamese boat people to draw attention to the plight of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing their wartorn homeland in Indochina at the time. By some estimates around 800,000 of them took to the seas between 1975 and 1995 in search of safe havens with as many as half perishing on the way. In Eichenberg's reshaping of the Christmas story, the Wise Men have not brought gifts fit for a king but what is most needful to the desperate mother and her emaciated child: fresh fruit, a bowl of rice, and a jug of water. The artist has placed himself twice in the picture--as Joseph and the first of the Magi. Let's remember all the millions who have been forced to leave their homes as we face the uncertainties of this new year. (John Kohan)