Friday, 11/17/17
In our first reading from the
Book of Wisdom we read, "All men
were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God .. . . who from studying
the works did not discern the artisan."
The passage goes on to list
some of the works that should lead us back to their maker. He lists the swift
winds and the circuit of the stars.
Now we, thanks to the amazing
advances of scientific discoveries, have become familiar with a thousand more
instances of God's hand in nature. The instance I most think of is the workings
of the identical Oxygen atoms that bring life to every creature high and low.
Each of the billions of
oxygen atoms in your body and each Sequoia tree has four neutrons and four positrons
in its nucleus; each of them has two electrons in an inner orbit, and six in an
outer orbit
And the tribute to those functions that keeps
coming to my mind is a verse from the final third of Dante's "Divine
Comedy."
Dante, arrived in Paradise,
wondered how everything, while new, was yet familiar.
When he asked the heavenly
Beatrice about this, she answered with the finest verse in all poetry and all theology.
She said,"All things among themselves possess an order, and this order is the
form that makes the universe like God."
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