From Webb to Bethlehem and vice versa
Today, Christmas Day, will see the launching into space of a giant telescope that could see the birth of light in our universe. The birth of light! James Webb is its name and in a month’s time it will reach its operational position behind the moon, one and a half million kilometres from Earth, four times further than the moon.
From there, fitted with an astonishing lens measuring 6,5m across and equipped with mirror segments made of beryllium and coated in gold, this telescope is a hundred times more powerful than the Hubble and is aiming to see what has never been beheld by human eyes before: what the nascent universe was like 100 to 200 million years after the Big Bang (13.8 billion years ago), and how the first stars –the cosmic dawn!– and the first galaxies and the first planetary systems were born. And also to see whether there is any evidence that the entire universe is teeming with life in the atmosphere of countless planets outside our solar system and our galaxy, how wonderful!; and to see how everything has evolved into what it is today, black holes included, –to see a black hole filled with invisible light!– and how everything will continue to evolve, we don’t know in what direction or towards what.
Today, on Christmas Day, I am transported in my imagination to that sophisticated observatory that is the Webb… and through its penetrating lens in search of light I reread the Gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke (so different from each other, by the way) about the birth of Jesus. I look again at Bethlehem, Bet Lehem, “house of bread”. A poor cave dwelling, a manger, some animals. A young couple, she in labour, panting with pain and hope, he supporting her as well as he can, full of anxiety and tenderness. A child is born, made of destitute and glorious flesh. His name is Jesus and he will spend his life doing good. The universal liberation, the fulfilment of the messianic hope, the manifestation of the Infinite in the flesh are already shining in him. The night is illuminated. The magi, wise Mazdeist priests from Persia, experts in astronomy, have seen his sign, a new star in the sky, and have set out in search of it. An angel comforts poor shepherds who fear some new misfortune: “Do not be afraid. Peace on Earth. Justice and peace have embraced.” And full of joy, they set off to where the light was being born, to help it to be born.
I contemplate the Bethlehem birth through the Webb telescope, one and a half million kilometres away, in the light that reaches it from much further away. How far away? Calculate the seconds there are in 13.7 billion years, and multiply the enormous number (which the calculator on my mobile phone cannot handle) by the speed at which light travels, 300,000 km per second. Contemplate Jesus from that distance, relocate him in his unyielding, beautiful individuality, an infinitesimal point in an infinite universe, and love him more and follow in his wake of subversive goodness.
In all likelihood, he was born in Nazareth around 4 B.C., 2025 years ago, much less than a millisecond of the universe right now. He is a human being, male, Jewish, belonging to the species Homo Sapiens, which appeared on this small planet very recently, 300,000 years ago, and which, like all living species, will very soon mutate –we will make it mutate– and will be replaced by another species that may be much more human or… even more inhuman, it is up to us. Learn to read the Gospel stories beyond the letter, not as chronicles, but as metaphors and symbolic poems, as prophetic oracles that do not speak about what happened, but about the utopia of a possible new world: fair, fraternal, happy. In the new cosmology with neither core nor summit, in the infinite universe without hierarchy that the Webb telescope opens up to us, we cannot hang on to the old geocentric theology or anthropocentric Christology any longer (and about the Church, what can we say?). We can no longer, for example, go on imagining Jesus as the sole incarnation of a “supreme God” in a cosmos made up of billions of galaxies and countless planets yet to be discovered and even formed. Jesus is unique, like every form in this universe, yet he is not the only unique one, but a unique one among unique ones, finite and unfinished, a brother in solidarity with all living beings, a brother on the way towards full universal brotherhood, a particular incarnation towards the full embrace of Peace and Justice, towards the full Incarnation of universal Desire and Love.
I contemplate Bethlehem from Webb, but I don’t want to stop looking at Webb from Bethlehem. I want to contemplate the universe in the light that emanates from the unique, endearing flesh of Jesus. Bethlehem, the “house of bread”, is a messianic symbol of hope for a world freed from inequality and hunger. Jesus’ unique light, like every ray of light, opens me up to the infinite universal light. It is the same light, but I need eyes to discover it.
I look at Webb from Bethlehem, because I need to be confident that the measureless cosmos that the beryllium and gold mirrors of the prodigious telescope reveal to us is not pure orphaned, wandering chaos. It is, after all, a mere human telescope in search of light always further away, outside, and always closer, inside. I need to be confident that, in spite of everything, the most beautiful thing that the stories tell is true, and that the secret of the universe is humble tenderness, the simple happy goodness of Bethlehem. I need that, I acknowledge it and I am not ashamed. Everyone needs their own Bethlehem, everyone needs their own to rekindle the flame of what is most human, to see the Invisible in all that is visible. If we could learn to contemplate from Bethlehem to Webb and vice versa, we would see the light being born in the nearest and the furthest, in the depths of ourselves and of all that is.
Aizarna (Basque Country). 25 December, 2021.
(Translated by Sarah J. Turtle)