Sometimes we have to ask, ‘Oh, dear, what can the matter be?’

I enjoy science - when it is presented in a manner I can understand. I like to read about what can be seen by the newest and most powerful telescopes, and how movement is measured by the warmer or cooler shades of light. I am engrossed by the speculation of how particles from the sun can reach the earth when they can’t exist long enough to make the journey. Do they go into a different dimension? According to some theories, there can be as many as 10 dimensions. (Don’t try to explain that part; I find handling ordinary space and time enough of a challenge!) And speaking of dimensions, I find it fascinating that scientists can see the edge of our universe as it expands – into what? Not into another dimension because this universe contains the other dimensions. Does it expand into eternity?

This expanding universe began to spread out with the Big Bang that produced all the matter that exists within the universe. Matter consists of various types of particles, and it exists throughout the universe. The kind of particles that are most familiar to me, and probably to most of us, are atoms. Matter can be neither made nor destroyed, but it can be “recycled”: its atoms can be dissolved and reconstituted in a different form, as when a piece of wood is burned and reduced to ashes. Nearly everything we know is made up of atoms, all being different compositions of various particles: stars, planets, quarks, dark holes, water, rocks, plants, animals and even my own body that is typing this article.

That is mind-blowing: the atoms that make up my body all began with the Big Bang! I go back that far, and so do the planets and the galaxies. But the planets and galaxies don’t produce articles about how amazing creation is. Even our two dogs here with me can give me protection and affection, but they can’t offer suggestions for my article. Only a person can do that. The dogs and I share a similar atomic makeup, but we don’t share the same abilities.

The universe is amazing, fascinating, and I am a part of it. Each of us is a part of it, but each of us can do something nothing else in the universe can do: we can wonder and stand in amazement at what surrounds us and even more at what we are. “I am awesomely, wonderfully made!” (Ps. 139) My body expresses me: it types out my thoughts, it speaks my words, it shares with others my tears and joys and laughter, it hugs those I love, and helps those I see in need. My body is me present to others in space and time. Each human being transforms ordinary atoms into shared love and joy and sorrow. No other being within this universe can do what we humans can do.

We exist in this expanding universe, and we cannot go beyond it, but there is One who entered it from the timelessness that cannot be known. Two thousand years ago, he entered space and time, and he took to himself a body made of ordinary atoms, exactly the same as our bodies, and he can never cast that body off. Within time or beyond it, he is eternally one with us by our shared humanity. But just as he shares our humanness, so he causes us to share his divinity. My body not only does what I want to do and shares my love and joys with others, now it also shares Jesus’ love with them. This is what he told us: “Love one another as I have loved you.” I can already do more than any of the planets and galaxies, but now each of us can do more than any other being in this universe: he has poured his Spirit into our hearts and now we can love with God’s own love, “the love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

Sister Gabriela of the Incarnation is a member of the Discalced Carmelites order in Flemington. Learn more at www.flemingtoncarmel.org.