God’s Special Gift to Humans

by Admin · Published December 23, 2015 · Updated December 18, 2015

In 2003 Archbishop DENIS HURLEY OMI wrote the Christmas guest editorial in The Southern Cross. It probably was the last of his writings to be published in his lifetime. To mark the centenary of the late archbishop�s birth this year, we reproduce this inspiring article here.

About 15 billion years ago a cosmic blast occurred that we have come to call the Big Bang. Our universe was on its way.

It was unrecognisable�just a chaotic cauldron of invisible particles crashing and cavorting at a temperature of about a million degrees centigrade.

About 15 billion years ago a cosmic blast occurred that we have come to call the Big Bang. Our universe was on its way. But, said Archbishop Denis Hurley, God was in it, guiding it and governing it�the first creative expression of his divine presence that we know.

But God was in it, guiding it and governing it. It was the first creative expression of his divine presence that we know.

As billions of years unfolded, minute forces gifted with gravity evolved into gigantic galaxies. The first stars were born.

About 500 million years ago our solar system emerged with, at its centre, a star we call the sun and nine planets, including our earth, orbiting around it. Our solar system belongs to the galaxy we call the Milky Way. Besides our sun, there are about another hundred billion suns in the Milky Way, and besides our galaxy countless billions of others.

And in all of this God is present, sustaining, upholding, promoting and perfecting.

A collectivity of circumstances affecting our planet came into existence with an outstanding combination of factors.

They were to produce continents and oceans, rocks and soil, a wonderful atmosphere, bacteria, insects, fish and reptiles, dinosaurs and other animals, and finally the human family with its miraculous gifts of intelligence and free will.

In all this God was present, promoting and directing, his presence taking on a new dimension as humans began to experience a sense of the divine.

That sense took on a variety of forms until God revealed himself to Abraham and a wonderful new intimacy arose between God and people, which deepened and intensified through Moses, Elijah, Isaiah and other prophets.

Then came the day when Gabriel brought God�s message to Mary and invited her to become the mother of his son, divine like himself. She consented and an ovum in her body was miraculously fertilised by the Holy Spirit. The Word was made flesh.

Nine months later that Word emerged from her body at Bethlehem, and a new and intense intimacy between God and his people grew out of the life and labour of Jesus, his death on the cross, his glorious resurrection, his return to his Father in glory and his sending of the Holy Spirit from the Father to share their glory with the human family and not only the human family but also the rest of creation.

As St Paul says: �The whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God� (Romans 8:21).

What an extraordinary development this is of the presence of God in the universe, a presence nourished and intensified by another expression of divine presence�the presence of Jesus in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

We give thanks to God for his presence among us through the spectacular mystery of creation and the sanctifying mystery of salvation and we celebrate them both with special joy at this time.