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Archives for October 9, 2022

Pastor’s Page – Sunday October 9, 2022

October 9, 2022 by admin

Dear Friends:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
So wrote William Blake in his 19th
-century poem, “Auguries of Innocence.” It’s a wonderful, difficult
piece that keeps before us the clashing visions of innocent idealism and cynical experience. Yet these
first four lines of the poem have commanded the greatest attention for generations of readers. They
came to mind as I was learning about the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which promises
to peer back through the mists of time to a period not long after the Big Bang. Astronomers explain
that for the first test of the telescope, they chose a random section of sky which, to all appearances
seemed “empty”; a space about the area of a hole in a straw. The JWST has several innovative
features. These include a mirror consisting of 18 gold-plated panels that fit together perfectly, and a
deployment of about one million miles from earth at a temperature only a few degrees above absolute
zero. The effect of these elements is to produce a photographic resolution so clear and dramatic as to
change forever our picture of the universe in its earliest days. Peeling back eons of time, scientists
discovered in the “empty” space tens of thousands of galaxies, and therefore countless opportunities
for human beings to explore and appreciate God’s creation. We see how people of reason use the tools
at their disposal to behold reality, quite literally, through their own “lens”…
…as do others, of course. In his 1999 “Letter to Artists,” Pope St. John Paul II discusses the mission of
artists, which is analogous to God’s action when creating the world. While God is
(T)he one who creates (and) bestows being itself, he brings something out of
nothing…The craftsman, by contrast, uses something that already exists,
to which he gives form and meaning. This is the mode of operation
peculiar to man as made in the image of God.
In fact, says the Pope, artists with unusual sensitivity can detect the inner connection between beauty
and goodness. That is, God imparts to great artists a “spark of his wisdom” that helps us all appreciate
the reality of “beauty/goodness” (kalokgathia) appealing to both the intellect and will.
The question for me is: what role do the “rest of us” play, who lack exceptional scientific expertise or
artistic skill? Ultimately, both scientist and artist rely on data that comes through the senses. But, as
Pope John Paul reminds us, “The knowledge conferred by faith is of a different kind: it presupposes a
personal encounter with God in Jesus Christ.” This is what happens to Christians every Sunday when
we come before God at Holy Mass, and spend one precious hour, as the poem suggests, “in Eternity.”

Faithfully,
Fr. Valentine

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