Today’s first reading is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, one of the most challenging and complex of all the New Testament books. After opening his epistle, Paul provides a summary of covenant history in just a few verses.
For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks (Rom 1:19-21).
In Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, Laudato Si’, he wrote that our eyes are not meant to stare into a virtual world of human making, but that our eyes are meant to look into the eyes of another to gain human connections and be in relationships with one another. Our eyes are also meant to look up, around and outside of ourselves so that we might see “invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity” of God – and be amazed, be awed, and understand.
Many years ago while hiking and rock climbing in the Utah desert lands, we were camped out on a rock outcropping under a canopy of stars. There was no city shine, no moon, but there were shadows from the brilliance of the stars. One of our crew remarked that while she appreciated the expression “a thousand points of light” the night sky was really a soft canvas of a night glow. Silently we passed her a set of glasses. The next voice we heard was “Oh my.” The veil had been lifted and she saw what had been present since the creation of the world.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote that priests “dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight”. And yet even the very scientific method was developed by the Franciscan priest Roger Bacon. Sure we had a rough spot with the whole Galileo thing, but the Church worked through it with the Vatican Observatory continuing to contribute to our understanding of the cosmos. In a striking challenge to the academic consensus that science and faith are incompatible, two French scientists argue that the latest scientific data and theories point to a singular beginning which can lead to only one logical conclusion: an all-powerful deity created the universe and all life within it.
The question of the compatibility of science and faith is not going away, but for us mere mortals we are left to make this day and all days, a time when we are mindful of the world God created with his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity. Our eyes were meant for this world, not the virtual world on screens. Look up, around and outside of ourselves to see what God has created and then accord him glory as God [and] give him thanks.
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