Stars of Wonder

Hello my friends! Happy 2020 and welcome to a new decade! Today we celebrate the feast of Epiphany where the Magi followed a wondrous star to discover their savior and were brought to their knees by it. In Mass today, our priest, the wonderful Monsignor Williams, spoke about the Star and the celestial heavens. He told a story of one of our former bishops who kept a telescope in his office. Not because he was a scholar of the stars, but because he loved to marvel at the heavens. He would take it out to hilltops or even his back yard with his friends and look up at the stars. He spoke of how nature reveals the divine and how his masterpieces should lead us back to him.

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

    which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

    human beings that you care for them?

[c]

Psalm 8

I know I’ve written before about the importance of realizing the beauty and truth through looking at the stars and all creation, but the fact that a priest I find so holy realizes the same action as so imperative, struck me yet again at a deeper level.

Consider a line from an ever familiar hymn “Star of wonder, star of night, star with royal Beauty bright”

Read that again

How many times in our lives do we allow ourselves to be overcome with beauty and wonder?

I was recently reading a biography of the great Christian poet Samuel Coleridge. It talked of his childhood and the main mission of his poetry being, “his heroic resistance to the reductivism which had begun in his era” “By reductivism I mean the entire cast of mind that always presumes that everything apparently great or mysterious can be reduced to its smallest parts and ‘explained’, that is to say ‘explained away’. We see it in the aggressive “New Atheism’ of our own time; we see in in the kind of reductivism that relies on phrases like ‘just’ or ‘only’ or ‘merely’, … Coleridge not only saw this danger but also saw its essential absurdity, its philosophical shallowness, its blind obsession with parts and refusal to contemplate the whole.”

This completely struck me. Many dismiss the fascination with the celestials as pre-modern. Of course we have now discovered how the stars operate, what they’re made of, but even in this realm, scientists are finding more and more of what they don’t know. Of course we are now learning the mechanics of such systems, but we by no means should reduce these heavens to merely parts. Even though Medieval Christians may have had faulty cosmology, they never failed to be left in wonder of creation, and blessed that their creator gave it to them.

Look up at the sky, really look. Don’t see the parts, see the beautiful masterpiece, the tapestry, and take things further. Who holds these stars together? Not just mere physical laws. How did these come to be? Who installed them so that they were found beautiful? The star led the magi to the child Jesus. The Heavens today should lead us back to that same Wonder, the child, the Prince of Peace. We must reclaim this wonder. There is a reason we look at the stars and are literally dumbfounded by beauty.

Every year, my friends and family start the New Years off by jumping in the lake when the

clock strikes midnight. This year we completed the yearly tradition, all of us counting down the seconds and taking the plunge into the icy, freezing cold water. And as seconds later, everyone ran out of that freezing water, grabbed their towels and sprinted to the cars, I took a moment and looked up at the sky. The stars were arrestingly brilliant that night, stunning, beautiful, and literally breathtaking. It was one of those moments when you’re so struck by beauty and wonder, your stomach kinda drops and you’re breath is taken away, and all you think is “wow.”

Wrapped in a towel, sopping wet, and freezing, I looked up at that masterpiece that our loving creator made for us and uttered a quick prayer in my heart. “Lord I give you this year of 2020 and I know you have things in control. I give you this decade and hope to make it a great one. I trust you”

So tonight, I issue you one challenge. Go outside. Lay in the grass (maybe grab a blanket cause it’s kinda cold). Just look up. Allow yourself to be overcome with that wonder and awe. Really look up. You don’t have to do anything, say anything, think anything. Allow the creator and the stars to hold you, just enjoy the beauty.

For those of you just about to start the second half of a school year. Pray to God, trust him, work hard, and reap the rewards. Trust him daily, and be assured of our prayers. What a wonderful adventure to look forward to!

Verso L’alto!

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Catherine Siena