Growing up in a hot and humid part of the world, where power outages were very common, I spent many hours as a child outdoors on starry nights to escape from the heat indoors. With it came my hobby of counting the number of stars. Needless to say, I never succeeded beyond a few hundred stars. Later in my school years, I learned that there are not just stars but also constellations of stars, and then there are galaxies, and there are billions and trillions of such galaxies.
Once, my science teacher made a staggering claim that if we could count all the galaxies in the universe, they would be more than the sands of the earth in number! And then came the stunning revelation from my catechism teacher just before Christmas that a tiny child named Jesus, lying in a manger, is the Creator of this unimaginably gigantic and massive universe! What shocked me the most was her statement: “He came down to save the little, minute, micro creatures called the human beings!” Who would believe this? No one but a little girl named Mary of Nazareth!
Though Mary never comprehended the size of the universe, she certainly understood the magnitude of God’s love for humankind! That’s why, though uncertain of her future, she said her famous “yes” to the Creator. In complete trust, she then surrendered herself completely to be guided by God’s Spirit and God’s ways. Perhaps her “science of faith” is what we need as we walk this Advent—the knowledge that no one else but God, the Creator of the Universe, is the best guide for one’s life. The best thing I can do is to allow God to take control of my life. Let the loving will of God be done!
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Fr. Renny Markose, SM (Region of India), is one of the three Marianist Specialists-in-Training during the 2024 / 2025 academic year. This article was published in the December 2024 edition of the NACMS newsletter.