God does cartwheels to get our attention
The Cartwheel Galaxy captured by the Webb telescope, August 2022
This summer, we’re being treated to the greatest show in the universe. Thanks to the unbelievable technology of the James Webb telescope that launched into space last Christmas, we’re seeing images from the earliest moments of creation - when God snapped his fingers and turned the lights on. And cool coincidence that it launched the day we celebrate the birth of Christ - our bright and morning star, through whom all things were made!
The Webb telescope is light years ahead of the Hubble telescope (pun intended). Webb can show us the most distant galaxies in space and the earliest stars ever formed. It can show us things we never even knew existed, like the Cartwheel Galaxy, which NASA says is 500 million light years away (I’ll take their word for it). I’m no scientist, but you don’t need a degree in astrophysics to appreciate the spectacular beauty unfolding before our very eyes.
Webb was a risky endeavor for NASA that cost tens of billions of dollars and took 30 years to get off the ground. It had 344 single points of failure, meaning if any one of those 344 things went wrong, the entire mission was over, kaput! But thankfully everything deployed like clockwork, and as a result, we have a ringside seat to the wonders of the universe.
Which brings me to the Cartwheel Galaxy. NASA says it was created by a high-speed collision 400 million years ago. (The fact that we have people smart enough to know that stuff blows me away.) So while the brainiacs explain how the cartwheel formed and what it’s made of, let’s pause for a moment and see it for what it really is: God’s handiwork.
God uses beautiful things to get our attention, to wake us up, to make us ponder, and ultimately to lure us to himself. God’s cartwheel is one such example. How can you look at that image and not see God’s fingerprints all over it? And yet St. Thomas Aquinas’ words ring true here, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
Science can explain a lot - it can tell us how old something is or how it was formed, but it can’t explain why something is beautiful or how it touches our soul. That’s God’s territory. This summer, God’s artwork is on full display, hanging in the museum of the night sky, revealing to us a mind that is unfathomable. St. Augustine said, “Si comprehendis, non est Deus.” (If you understand it, it isn’t God.) Smart man that Augustine! NASA could learn a thing or two from him!
