Across the Universe: Christmas Presence

  • Article (blog post)
  • 700 words
  • Level: all audiences

Vatican observatory astronomer Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., writes (in a post for The Catholic Astronomer blog) about both the Book of Job and about how he finds doing science to be like playing a game with God :

What’s it like, I am sometimes asked, to be both a Jesuit brother and an astronomer? I can compare it most easily to another memory from my childhood. I can recall a rainy summer afternoon, in our cottage by Lake Huron, spent playing cards with my mother. I couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old, and I have never been much of a card player, but that wasn’t the point. It was a way for her to spend time with me, a young boy who would squirm at any overt sign of affection, a way of showing me that I was loved….

So how is that like being a Jesuit scientist? Because I feel that same emotion, now, in the lab. Every corner of nature that I puzzle over, every data set I plot hoping to see a pattern jump out, is a little game set for me by the Creator. Every time I finally get the solution, I can feel him cheering me on, laughing and saying, “Great! Now here’s another one.” Science is the greatest game; a game I get to play with God. It’s his way of telling me he loves me. My mom taught me that. And in the background, the stars sing for joy.

Click here to read the full article on The Catholic Astronomer – the blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.