Third Sunday of Easter

Lectionary: 46

He was known before the foundation of the world
but revealed in the final time for you,
who through him believe in God
who raised him from the dead and gave him glory,
so that your faith and hope are in God.

When I was a collegian in Saint Louis a group of us routinely finished our evening meal in time to catch the syndicated, daily broadcast of Star Trek. We had missed out on most of its initial broadcast because we were not permitted to watch television in the high school seminary and in novitiate. We wanted to catch up with the real world! The writing of the show was wretched, its special effects, awful; and acting, atrocious; but the social messages were timely and the stories were thrilling.

There were some among us who believed engineers might develop ways to travel at warp speed (faster than the speed of light) and contact alien intelligences in the universe. Even intergalactic federations seemed plausible. I hope I was more skeptical than that. In any case, I have since put aside childish things.

Warp speed will never be attained. If there were human-like intelligences in outer space they would have contacted, exploited and destroyed us long ago – just as we would do to them given the opportunity.  I frankly doubt we’ll ever send humans beyond our solar system. The costs would be too much; the investment, too risky; and the potential payback, too remote. It would require people willing to condemn their progeny for centuries to come to an unlikely search for a habitable world among billions upon billions of exoplanets.

So what does SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) really hope to find out there in the great beyond?  I think they want a Presence to fill the great void of emptiness. The universe (or multiple universes) represents a daunting challenge to our fragile existence on our imperiled Mother Earth.   

What they want is One who is more deserving to occupy the Universe than this "quintessence of dust" (Hamlet) this "poor bare, forked animal." (King Lear) They want someone WORTHY to fill the Universe and give it Meaning. 

Jesus Christ has done so. God has shown us this. 

He was known before the foundation of the world but revealed in the final time for you…  

I looked again and heard the voices of many angels who surrounded the throne and the living creatures and the elders. They were countless and they cried out in a loud voice: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing.” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe, cry out: “To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor, glory and might, forever and ever.” The four living creatures answered, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.