Season of Hope

Season of Hope

Fr Dale

December Angelus

Thanksgiving Day is past. The stores have rolled out their Christmas promotions and decorations. We have entered the “holiday season.” As has been said countless times before, such a pattern of time is not the church’s time but the culture’s time. During my 2 weeks of vacation at the beginning of November, I concentrated on doing 3 things: Resting, Reading, and Exercise. I did tolerably well at each of them, which is to say I could have done better but I could have done worse. In the reading department, while at Camp Mokule’ia, I read Sephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell. I had eyed this book in the bookstore from its first appearance, but put off buying it. Finally a friend loaned it to me. Hawking, for those of you unfamiliar with the name, is a world-famous physicist (perhaps familiar from the image of him in a motorized wheel-chair, since he has suffered from ALS for many years). He made his name in physics because of his work in demonstrating the theoretical existence of “black holes.” He now holds the same chair of Mathematics at Cambridge as did Isaac Newton 300 years ago. Of late, Hawking is well-known to many because he has done better than most at making contemporary physics accessible to ordinary folks like myself. The reading My reading was exhilarating and challenging. When I was 16 years old I had some facility in science and math. 40 years later it is all a faint glimmer in the past. It turns out the stars in the sky are somethig like that glimmer of the past. The light we see sparkling in the night sky actually left those stars millions of years ago. And that’s just the beginning of the journey that Hawking offers the reader. Einstein’s contributions, string theory (wherein there are postulated many more dimensions than the 4 to which we are accustomed: 3d + time) and much more awaits the reader. Among the mind-bending discussions in the book, a fair amount of time is spent considering the possibility of time travel. Though the question is hotly debated among today’s scientists, Hawking believes that there is a good possibility that time-travel is theoretically (as opposed to “practically”) possible. You may well be asking why I am writing about this here and why I think you might care. The reason grows out of my own conviction – it is a foundation of my faith in God – that “God is Truth.” For this reason I believe that anyone who is able to know or glimpse any facet of what is true, that person is knowing something of God. Scientists, for me, can teach me something about God – not everything, to be sure, but something. So I pay attention and am interested in what they are saying – as I try to pay attention to what artists, musicians, even politicians are saying and doing. They each are capable of teaching me something of God. From my own experience of God, I am not at all astonished by the idea of time being slippery, the present slipping into the past and then again into the future. Something like that proclamation is built into our brief exclamation of faith at the Eucharist: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” Ancient meditation on the meaning of the Seder meal at Passover indicates that while the stories of past events are retold (e.g. enslaved Israelites in Egypt being delivered by Yahweh) what was past is made present and God’s deliverance is made real for us. The same thing is believed by Christians to occur at the Eucharistic prayer. What I found intriguing about my reading of Hawking was that he seemed to primarily consider the possibilty of going back in time. He wasn’t really considering the possibility of discovering where it’s all headed. The reason for that, as he freely admits, is that as a positivist scientist, he is interested in the evidence that can be seen and demonstrated. As Christians, we have a different starting point, a different platform for hearing the evidence and for looking out from this place we call home and the present time. In particular, I have in mind the essential nature of “hope” in the Christian view of the world and the “universe.” We are now entering that season of hope, approaching the “holidays” as the popular culture calls them. In the language of the church, we are ending a church year and beginning another with the anticipation, the waiting, the expectation, the listening, and the preparation that is involved with celebrating the Nativity of Jesus the Messiah. The Meaning of Faith 1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts; and always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear: 2 When I was in college, I laughed at the stories from a couple of comedians based in Maine. They told stories that were local to the northeast of the U.S., but somehow the comedy played in other parts of the country too. I was able to “get it.” One of the stories I still remember is of the directions being given to a traveler in some rural area of Maine. The local person begins by pointing to the barn “down thar” where you turn left and go a pretty far piece, then you make a right turn at the big oak tree, . . . and after a long account, he ends by saying, “Come to think of it, you can’t get there from here.” I thought of that story because it seems to me that you can’t get from Stephen Hawking’s starting point to the place of hope as told in the Letter to the Hebrews or 1st Peter. As fantastical as Hawking’s reflections are, they are rooted in a rear-ward looking view of the universe. His universe in a nut-shell can’t include the place to which we are headed. Hope looks out to the future, to what we cannot yet see, but to which we are headed. It is our destination that is now unfolding. When my children were younger – and in their eyes I was big and strong – they would jump off the stairs into my arms. Sometimes there would be a contest to see how high up they could go. I enjoyed exercising with them their ability to trust. That seems to be the missing ingredient in the scientist’s view of the universe. It’s difficult for them to trust in what is unseen (or unmeasurable). When the eyes of faith look out at the universe, we can see all of what Stephen Hawking can see, looking backward. But we can also see that which we anticipate, that for which we long, that which is unfolding into our present. The season is upon us, and we begin to long for the coming (the advent) of Christmas. And as God is faithful, from ages past to the future ages, he appears among us, Emmanuel. The light that is come into the world illuminates our path so that both present, past and future are made manifest (Epiphany). And our journey continues. We proceed through the slow days and the fast ones, the lengthening (Lent) of days. And the God of ages past and the future ages continues with us. Finally, in the center of our life, at the beginning of the meaning of the universe, God’s Son comes to an end and a new beginning on the cross (Easter). God is with us. Praise be to Him who was, who is, and who is to come. The alpha and the omega.