Where do We Come From?

 Whenever I hear of the Magi following the star to Bethlehem, I think of our astronomers today who look up to the stars to learn the answers to the great questions we have like: "Where do we come from? How did we get here? And what is the fate of all creation?"
              Before the work of the astronomer, Edwin Hubble, in the early 20th century, the scientific consensus was that the universe did not have a beginning. The idea that creation had a beginning was considered absurd and ridiculous. Einstein in his early career even created something called the cosmological constant to doctor his equations to avoid having to admit that the universe had a beginning. He later admitted it was the biggest mistake of his career. There was tremendous resistance to Hubble's evidence because as the first chairman of NASA's Lunar Exploration Committee, Robert Jastrow, put it so well in his book God and the Astronomers:  “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” 
Fortunately, respect for truth and evidence won out at the "Big Bang" theory, which posits that there is a beginning of the universe, is now the scientific consensus. And if the universe has a beginning, there must be something or someone to begin it. We call that First Cause: God. Thanks to Edwin Hubble, atheism became unscientific. For the astronomers, like the Magi, they followed the stars and it led them to God.
 
God bless,
Fr. Scott