28th Saturday of Ordinary Time
Eph 1:15-23; Lk 12:8-12
The beautiful Psalm 8 was our Responsorial Psalm this morning. It has some wonderful sentiments:
When I behold your heavens the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars which you set in place–
What is man that you should be mindful of him,
Or the son of man that you should care for him?
3,000 years ago the Psalmist looked up into the night sky and marveled. He had an inkling of the majesty and magnitude of what he saw. He felt very small in comparison. There have been a lot of technological advances since then – we see much further. But each new discovery just convinces us even more of the enormity of what’s out there and how much we do not understand. It is so far beyond us – we will never come to the end of its mystery.
And if creation is so vast and incomprehensible, what does that say about the Creator? How could he stoop so low to want to be in a relationship with us? We are like an insignificant grain of sand or speck of dust. And yet he humbles himself to come begging for our love and attention.
Is there other intelligent life in this universe — or these universes? Who knows? Basing ourselves on Scripture and revelation, we might be all there is, other than the angels. Isn’t that amazing?! All this space, all these galaxies, and this little particle called “Earth” is the only place with immortal souls on it! Our Creator certainly has blessed us with innumerable blessings. And yet, all these human beings running around — how many of them are giving him any thought?
You have made him little less than the angels,
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under his feet.
With our gift of intelligence and reason, we are made masters of all the other things on earth. We have been given plants and animals to eat and water to drink. Our soil contains iron and silver and gold and other useful things like oil. We have been able to harness electricity and nuclear power. Who knows what other inventions and discoveries lie in the future?
And yet, in some ways we are not masters of the earth. We have not been able to control the weather or natural disasters. Hurricane Matthew just killed over a 1,000 people in Haiti. Each year earthquakes kill large numbers of people. Floods and wild fires do inestimable damage every month. We haven’t figured out how to prevent tornadoes. There are still a lot of diseases we haven’t found a cure for. And we haven’t discovered a way to avert our own death.
When one looks around at creation – at the enormity of the universe, the complexity of cells and molecules, the order and beauty of it all – how can one not believe that God guided it all into being? We can only conclude, as this Psalm does: “O Lord, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth.”
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