For those who believe in God, these images are certainly sparking a sense of wonder and awe at the greatness, power, and intelligence of God the Creator—Creator, not just of our planet or solar system, but of all those galaxies and stellar phenomena. “How numerous are your works, O Lord. You made them all in your wisdom,” says Psalm 104.
Now for those who do not believe in God, these images are surely fascinating, but without faith, stars are just stars, the result of undirected and ultimately meaningless cosmic forces.
It reminds me of the story of Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut and the first human being in space. Orbiting Earth in his spaceship, Gagarin said he looked down and saw how beautiful the planet is. And he urged his fellow man to preserve the beauty of the earth and to increase it. A beautiful sentiment certainly congruent with our faith. The earth is beautiful and we have duty to preserve it’s beauty.
Now, for many years it was claimed that Gagarin made another pronouncement not so much congruent with our faith. Supposedly, while Gagarin orbited the earth in outer space, the cosmonaut said, “I looked all around, and I did not see God.”
This was reported by the Communist Government, and now come to find out it was actually the Atheist First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, who made the statement mocking the idea of God. The pronouncement was ascribed to Gagarin in order to further the party line: you can’t see God in outer space, therefore God doesn’t exist. Some, sadly draw the same conclusion from the new James Webb Telescope images.
But again, for those who believe, the complexity, and structure, and beauty of the cosmos—the beauty of the earth—are signs of God, they are “evidence of things not seen” as the letter to the Hebrews puts it—they are visible evidence of the unseen Creator.
For believers, the fingerprints of the Creator are all over creation—and science can help us discover them. Creation is beautiful, logical, and consistent because the Creator is beautiful, logical, and consistent. Creation is magnificent for the human mind to contemplate because the Creator is magnificent for the human mind to contemplate.
But theology and our Christian faith tell us something, that the physical sciences cannot reveal: while unknown galaxies spirate in silence millions of light years away according to the laws and will of the Creator, at the same time, God is still concerned with your toothache, your anxiety over tomorrow’s meeting, your physical and emotional needs, your soul: the nitty-gritty, day-to-day events of our lives.
And I’ve met some Catholics, who, sadly, do not really believe this. I’ve heard them say it: God is so great, so immense—"that he doesn’t really care about me…he doesn’t have time for me.” And that’s really an old heresy—Deism—which says, God set creation into motion but is now really not at all concerned with the innerworkings of Creation including us. Some of the U.S. founding fathers were Deists.
And some of the Catholics use their Deism to justify acting as if they can simply slide into heaven under the radar. God doesn’t notice me, so it really doesn’t matter how I act. It doesn’t matter if I pray, it doesn’t matter if I go to Church, it doesn’t matter if I follow ALL the commandments.
But God knows and counts the number of stars and galaxies, the number of hydrogen atoms in the universe, and also the number of hairs on your head. He knows the inner workings of your heart, the motivation for your decisions, your secret fears, your hopes and dreams, your aches and pains, your virtues and sins. He has all the time in eternity just for you. He loves you with love beyond words and desires your well-being more than you do. He hears every one of your thoughts and prayers, and longs for a living, vibrant, authentic friendship with you—he is waiting for you to pray, waiting for you to utilize the grace he bestows upon you in abundance.
He's waiting for you to open your heart to Him, to let Him more deeply into your life, to allow Him to shape you and form you into the person he made you to be.
In a way, the James Webb space images and other scientific marvels remind us, that God invites our curiosity, our seeking. He wants us to cultivate our minds in order to understand the logic and discover the beauty of the universe—how in the words of Psalm 19 “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” He wants us to seek Him and discover Him—and His providential love for us, and His desire that we glorify Him by our lives.
But, in order to reflect the goodness and beauty of God, we need to make conscious efforts to do so. After all, His act of Creation was a conscious willed effort. So, make something beautiful this week: a poem, a drawing, a painting, a short story, a song, a craft, a carving, a sculpture that glorifies God. Spending time using your gifts to make something beautiful will fill you with more happiness than any amount of television, video games, social media debates, or shopping ever could.
Secondly this week, spend some prayerful time cultivating that sense of God’s love for you. Spend time with a crucifix in your hands pondering God’s love for you, or meditate upon a bible verse that speaks of God’s love for you, his plans for you, his desires for you, his mercy bestowed upon you in Christ.
Lastly, exercise the gift of faith this week, the virtue of faith. Faith is a muscle, the more we use it, the stronger faith will become: When you see a beautiful sunset this week or the stars in the night sky say, "Thank you Lord; I believe in you." When you visit a loved one who is sick or dying, say, "Lord, I believe in you; don't abandon this person, give them strength." When you experience life's sorrows, say, "Lord, you suffered for me; teach me to suffer with faith for you." When you experience life's joys, to say, "Lord, this is just a small hint of your love for me; teach me to believe in you more deeply."
At this holy Mass, the Lord comes to us specifically in Holy Communion. Let us exercise our faith, to believe in his real presence, whose body and blood, soul and divinity becomes food for our souls, that we may grow in love and live by faith, becoming the people God made us to be, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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