Seeing God at play: a Jesuit looks at the stars

We learn from Plato that play is a serious thing—perhaps even the most profound activity we can be engaged in, since, unlike work, it is done only for itself and not to achieve some other end. It follows, then, that God—who needs nothing and is already perfect—was at play when he created the universe, and that we, creatures made in his image, are invited to join in this play. The creation can lead us to the creator.

This was the theme that ran through the engaging and beautifully illustrated talk given at a recent Melbourne Catholic Professionals event at the Australian Catholic University, where an eager crowd gathered on Tuesday 29 July to hear ‘the Pope’s astronomer’, Jesuit Br Guy Consolmagno SJ, director of the Vatican Observatory, one of the oldest astronomical institutions in the world.

Asking, ‘What can a Jesuit say about the stars?’, he started his talk by showing a painting of St Ignatius of Loyola gazing at a sky full of stars. The founder of the Jesuits, he said, discovered his greatest consolation in gazing for a long time at the beauty and grandeur of the stars. ‘I hope we have all had that experience,’ Br Guy remarked. ‘I have been a planetary scientist for half a century, and I never get tired of looking at the stars.’

Studying the physical universe, studying creation, is a way to get to know God.

There is, he said, ‘something about seeing the stars in the sky that reminds you the universe is bigger than our problems, and the universe is more beautiful than we can imagine.’ We have a tendency to forget that we are ‘things’ created as part of an unimaginably vast creation.

 Quoting the Anglican priest and physicist John Polkinghorne’s observation that ‘we are not apprentice angels’, he dismissed the idea that we are just ‘souls trapped in these stupid bodies waiting to get out’.

‘No, no, that’s exactly what we are not. We are created.  We are the things that God created and God so loved that … he sent his Son to become one of these created things.’ This means that ‘studying the physical universe, studying creation, is a way to get to know God.’

From this perspective, pure science—not science done to improve our technology or to solve a problem, but science done for the sheer joy of discovery—can be understood as contemplating God at play in his creation. It is also an invitation to join in the fun. As Br Guy said, ‘I do astronomy not to make better cell phones—though I like better cell phones—but because the stars are gorgeous, and the science is fun.’

This call beyond the merely practical or utilitarian can be traced back to the Old Testament and God’s institution of the Sabbath. ‘The goal of creation is the Sabbath,’ he said, ‘to stop worrying about the things you need to do to live, and to spend one day doing the things that feed your soul. God made us to be astronomers!’

Ultimately, it is the wonder we experience when we contemplate the higher things of God that ‘makes us human,’ he suggested. ‘This is what makes us more than just well-fed animals. This is what feeds our souls, because we do not live by bread alone.’

These deep connections between science, wonder and joy are why, according to Br Guy, science as we know it arose not just in a Christian culture but from within the Christian Church and depends on a Christian understanding of the world.

First, science in the Christian tradition accepts that the universe is real and has its own nature. It is not something we create with our minds, nor can we change it by wishing it to be different. Gravity, for instance, is stubbornly persistent. Second, science depends on the universe being intelligible. Its nature and laws can be known and understood.

The goal of creation is the Sabbath, to stop worrying about the things you need to do to live, and to spend one day doing the things that feed your soul. God made us to be astronomers!

Without these two ideas, science is impossible, yet, as Br Guy pointed out, these are religious, and specifically Christan, ideas that would have been scandalous to most humans for most of human history—and still are in some philosophical circles. They point to an intelligent creator at play in his creation.

All this talk of play can feel uncomfortable in a very outcome-driven society like ours. Why bother with such impractical questions? Why devote real resources to them? Why not just ponder these problems at home in our idle moments?

Grappling with these questions helped to shape Br Guy’s life and vocation. As a young man, his love of science fiction led him to science, and to studying meteorites, those bits of rock that fall from the sky and prove that everything we see up in space is real and has substance. ‘They are relics,’ he explained. ‘Just like a relic of a saint’s bone reminds you the saint really existed, the relics of space remind you that those things in the sky are real places that we can walk on and pick up rocks from and bring them back here.’

But as a post-doctoral student,  he started to question his priorities. ‘Why am I worried about meteorites [when] there’s people starving in the world?’ he asked. ‘Shouldn’t I be doing something more with my life?’

If I can see the stars, I’m not lost. I am home.

The answer, he decided, was to volunteer with the US Peace Corps in Kenya. But instead of finding himself in a remote community, he was assigned to the University of Nairobi as a lecturer. Struggling with a language he didn’t understand and food he was unfamiliar with, he discovered that ‘I am a guy who likes to read about adventures; I don’t want to actually live one.’

Plagued by intense homesickness, he found consolation in the wonder and familiarity of the constellations, viewed from an ideal vantage point on the equator. ‘If I can see the stars,’ he realised, ‘I’m not lost. I am home.’ Instead of giving up, he stayed for another two years, coming to understand that not all of us are cut out to be aid workers.

After returning to America, he joined the Jesuits as a brother, not feeling called or suited to the priesthood. Expecting to be sent to teach in one of the Jesuit universities, he was instead sent to the Vatican Observatory, where he is currently director and clearly having fun.

Br Guy’s life and work both powerfully make the case that science can lead us to God. Yet a common perception persists that science and religion are in conflict. While the Galileo affair is often raised in support of this misperception, Br Guy suggested that much of what people think they know about Galileo is often wrong. The affair was messy and by no means the Church’s finest hour, he said, but the Church was not guilty of trying to suppress science.

Drawing on the astronomical concepts of parallax and star magnitude, Br Guy showed that, given the extent of scientific understanding at the time, the Church was voicing real scientific objections to Copernicus’ theory. The understanding was wrong, but it was not unreasonable. What seems obvious to us today was by no means obvious then.

Faith is not the goal. Reason is not the goal. They are the tools. Truth is the goal.

The tendency to ask the wrong questions of Scripture, he said, has also fed the misperception that science and faith are in conflict. ‘Genesis isn’t about creation,’ he pointed out. ‘Genesis is about the Creator. The science in Genesis was obsolete a hundred years after it was written. But the theology of Genesis has never gone out of date.’

Similarly, he argued, the supposed debate between faith and reason often misses the point. Both faith and reason, he said, are important tools, but neither is the goal. ‘Truth is the goal.’

In support of the important role the Church has played in science, Br Guy also highlighted the achievements of many famous priest-astronomers, such as 19th-century Jesuit Fr Angelo Secchi, who founded the science of astrophysics by using spectroscopy to understand what stars are made of.

Of course, it’s not only the scientists who are at play in God’s creation. Br Guy pointed out that the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins was also a keen amateur astronomer and that his astronomy often inspired his poetry, deepening his sense of joy at finding God alongside us in creation. As Br Guy said, ‘The laws of nature should be an inducement to joy. CS Lewis reminded us that joy is a sign of God’s presence.’

The ready buzz of conversation after the lecture, and the eager crowd gathering to get their books signed, all bear witness to the real joy that Br Guy’s engaging and accessible lecture inspired in those who gathered to hear him.