In So Many Words
Recently I have been fascinated by the news of two black holes circling each other and heading towards a massive explosion. All the physics of it is beyond me but that this happened nine billion years ago is amazing to me. I do not know what I thought about the size of the universe but that it has taken nine billion years for the light to come from there to earth means that the universe is very, very big!
When I put this amazing phenomenon together with my belief that we all live in God and that God lives in the whole universe, then that makes God very, very big also. I can only stand still in wonder. As a priest, as a missionary, I have been talking about God all my life. I was once warned not to domesticate God. I was being told that I was making God too small. I guess we do this because the immensity of God is hard to imagine. I think I have been guilty of not respecting the wonderful mystery of God. Not only is God so big, God is also close to me, to us. That such a big God wants to be so close to us is also awesome.
That such a big God wants to be so close to us is awesome.
There is a deep truth about the maxim that "we are our relationships." In this we are in the image of the Trinity which is constituted by the relationships between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So in contrast to the way many of us think of ourselves as just a small person with a few close friends, we need to look at the bigger picture. We need to see ourselves in the mirror of the universe. We need to see ourselves as God sees us.
We have amazing connections. We are connected to a huge universe and to a God who continues to create it out of love. As we become more and more conscious of our relationships, or our connections, we can stand in awe of what our God has done. We think of the bigness of creation, but we are connected to all of it and especially we are connected to the One who is making us daily into his image and likeness. God's work is not going to stop. This year God will continue to work on us, our world and our universe. He will continue to love us into fullness.
Let us wonder at the immensity of God who holds and creates such a big Universe. Let this love poured out by God be the basis of our hope for a better world.
Columban Fr. Trevor Trotter is the director of the Missionary Society of St. Columban in Australia and New Zealand.
The Columbans are a society of missionaries, including priests and lay people, who minister to people of various cultures as a way of witnessing to the universal love of God.