Between the ordinary and the extraordinary
The immense universe and the images and research that the James Webb telescope is revealing show us more than the greatness of science, how much nature and human knowledge are tiny compared to the organic and mysterious richness of the universe.
These are not discoveries of other planets inhabited by organic beings like ours, but rather the limits of the very laws of physics to the point of questioning what absolute time and space is the greatest revelation of modernity and rationality, which is now changing by the laws of relativity and guided by the more exact notion of what we call eternity.
Also in everyday life there are extraordinary facts, not those proclaimed by soothsayers, false prophets or oracles of a wisdom that is already known to be limited, by the correct view of science itself, uncertainty and error is its safest path, or as Bohr wrote to Einstein : the root of all evil is the human idea that someone holds all the truth.
The Christmas period is for Christians the revelation of a new and extraordinary truth, in the sense that it is beyond all reason and human science, by divine desire God became man, in a Trinitarian relationship, desire of God the Father, conception of Holy Spirit in a virgin (see previous post) and a divine-human God among us enters the story.
The fact is extraordinary because history has changed and will change even more as the space-time dimension in which human life is immersed passes, everyone dies and others are born and a divine truth is revealed through the noosphere, the sphere that mind or spirit inhabits and which no one can deny, because even philosophical and theological errors and conceptions are immersed in it.
The biblical characters, sincere men despite being followers of Jesus, also doubted his conception, his life (walking on the waves of the sea, the multiplication of the loaves, the healing of the man born blind, the resurrection of Lazarus) in all 36 acts extraordinary works, of which 22 are cures, all of this will one day be known to science, it is possible, but they were done before this time, when science was taking its initial steps.
But there are only divine acts, such as crossing the sea on dry foot, seeing Moses’ burning bush, and the greatest of all extraordinary acts, the one that only divine revelation can confirm, and perhaps one day will bring about some phenomenon. extraordinary, the virgin conceived and God came to dwell among us, he too died, but the Christian belief is that he rose and lives in eternal life.
Even the virgin who conceived, the young Mary betrothed to Joseph, who, upon hearing the news announced by an angel, doubts what is happening to herself (Lk 1:29): “Mary was troubled by these words and began to think what the meaning of salvation would be”, so the biblical characters idealized by theologians and pastors, were actually very human and not superstitious (painting of Leonardo da Vinci, around 1472).
It is true that later Mary will sing her Magnificat, knowing that God has made her great, but only after walking kilometers to Cousin Izabel’s house, who also received the grace of remaining a virgin in old age, but in her case there is nothing so extraordinary, they are known cases in the history of women of advanced age who have conceived.
Faith is believing in the extraordinary, even if you don’t have it, knowing that God’s intervention in history is possible, and what Christmas represents is the great intervention that is the very coming of the God-child.