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Christmas Weekday
January 6, 2017
St. Agnes Church
Do you know the name of closest star to our sun?
At this point in time, the closest star is Alpha Centauri. How far away from the earth is this star?
Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years distant from our sun. That’s 5.88 trillion miles.
Here’s an interesting fact I just learned this morning.
An astronomical unit is 93M miles…the distance between the earth and the sun.
There are 63,000 astronomical units in a light year.
Is it by coincidence that there are 63,000 inches in a mile?
Now…if we rescaled these distances down to familiar units of measure…
if we represent the distance between the earth and the sun as one inch,
then the distance between our sun and Alpha Centauri would be 275,310 inches or 4.37 miles.
In local terms, if the distance between earth and sun was one inch,
then traveling south on I-75Alpha Centauri would be right at I-275 in Erlanger.
There’s more. I said that at this point in time the closest star is Alpha Centauri.
The stars are moving. They are in motion. Distances are constantly changing.
At some point in the future a different star may be closer.
All this stuff amazes me. It astounds me. It blows my mind.
This universe in which we live with its billions of galaxies and countless number of stars,
as I become more conscious of the truth of this mystery,
its vastness…how it is all glued together…how I exist in relation to it…I stand speechless.
Where did all this come from? …from God.
My mind won’t let me believe anything other than something or someone started all this,
created all this, set all this into motion.
There has to be a “Prime Mover”….and for me the Prime Mover is God.
I am amazed at and by other things in life.
I can remember in high school biology class, taking a swab of my mouth,
looking at it under a microscope…seeing for the first time all the stuff
swimming around in my saliva. It was a whole new world.
I am amazed by nature wonders, by the creativity of artists, musicians.
I am amazed by some magic tricks, by human ingenuity, by the power of love.
These things delight me, capture my attention, fill me with wonder,
remind me that the truth of things touches something in the depth of my being.
I have come to a judgment, a conclusion of sorts. I think it holds true for all of us.
Until you and I are truly amazed when we look upon the infant Jesus,
until the fact that God became human and was born into this world delights us beyond measure,
captures our imagination over and above anything else,
until we realize the truth that at Christmas we acknowledge and celebrate
that the God who created the universe is the same God who came and pitched his tent with us…
until this time, our faith is mediocre, average, minimal and our Christianity is only in its earliest stages.
I don’t think we have even begun to understand the truth of the Incarnation.
Until the truth of God’s love and his offer of salvation become real to us to the point of amazement,
we are of the mind that the world is flat and we have yet to discover that it is really round;
we are of the mind that the earth is the center of the all life, of all existence
when in reality as human beings we are but a speck on a speck of dust in God’s world.
If we are not amazed at the birth of Jesus Christ we will to be amazed by his resurrection from the dead.
Our prayer today: “O Lord, you are amazing. Overwhelm my heart with wonder and awe as I
contemplate the birth of Jesus, Your Son. Draw me ever closer to the truth of Your love. Give me eyes
that see beyond the surface of my life into the depths of the mystery You are. Amen!”