Homily

Many of you have probably heard of Stephen Hawking, the British-born mathematician, physicist, and cosmologist, whose works in a number of areas of research have been highly praised for many years. He is a brilliant scholar and thinker. I watched a short documentary film he made called, "The Meaning of Life." He begins by asking one of the most basic and profound questions that people can ask: Is there a meaning to life, a reason why we exist in this world? Hawking says that philosophers have asked that question for many centuries, but science ended that. Science has changed everything. He says that the first thing we must accept as we go searching for the meaning of life is that all of this world around us is nothing more than physics. Hawking is a materialist who believes there is nothing outside or apart from the material universe; no God, no soul, no heaven, no spirit.

Very much simplifying his documentary, Hawking holds that we are simply marvelous, self-aware creatures, who interact with our world and each other based on physical laws over which we have no real control. We act and react based on electrical-chemical connections in our brains which are fantastically complex. We believe we have free will, but in fact what we call free will is nothing more than the actions and responses of our brain, which we could predict accurately if we were sophisticated enough to measure them. Hawking says that reality is not "out there," but rather reality is in the mind of the beholder. We build our own personal realities in our own minds. Therefore, the meaning of life is whatever you choose it to be. He says, quote, "The meaning of life is not something out there, but it's right between our ears. In many ways this makes us the Lords of Creation." Stephen Hawking is an atheist. He once said that Heaven "is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." That is his reality.

Stephen Hawking is one of the most intelligent people in the world. But my one grandmother, on my dad’s side, who was of average intelligence and a very good cook, who only went to school for a couple of years in Eastern Europe was much, much wiser than Stephen Hawking, because she believed in God. She believed in God because she knew Him. My grandmother on my mom’s side only went through eighth grade. She too was of average intelligence and also a great cook. She loved to pray and worship at Liturgy. She was a very wise woman. Both of these women gave me great examples of what it was to live in wisdom.

So why bring this up tonight? I would say that a large majority of Americans would reject Hawking's views that there is nothing beyond the physical world. That's not so much the problem. The problem is how many Americans live as though there is nothing beyond the material world? How much are people pre-occupied with material life over a life which satisfies the soul and our very deeply ingrained need to connect with our Creator? That need is there, but it can be pushed aside, ignored, and neglected as we look for ways to try and satisfy our hunger with people and things in this world. People may surely believe that there is a God, a heaven and a few people even think there is place called hell, but it's simply not very important, it finds no real place in their everyday lives. There are a million distractions all the time and many of them promise comfort, peace, happiness, pleasure and satisfaction. Lots of people spend lots of time in these distractions. And how very sad it is to hear young people say that they believe in science, when even science doesn’t believe in science.

So then, it's not surprising that many people have adopted ideas and values that are very compatible with Hawking's materialistic philosophy. How many people believe that science and technology are always leading us to a better future? How many people hold that reality is, in fact, in the eye of the beholder and different for each person? How many people do think that the meaning of life cannot be discovered out there, but it can only be found "in here?" How many people think we are much better as human beings because of science, technology and education, and that those are the most important elements to a better future?

Science can indeed be very good, but it cannot tell us what is good. Technology can be extremely helpful, or it can be extremely dangerous, but either way technology cannot make us good.

There's no doubt people, most people, will tell you they believe in a spiritual reality, just as I believe that with every passing year fewer and fewer people think a spiritual life is necessary, or even important. They may not hold all of Hawking's views, but they accept some of his arguments, and this kind of materialism creeps along and grows stronger all the time.

What an irony then that we worship a God tonight Who did not come to save us from the material world, but rather calls us to transform the material world by living in His grace. A God Who does not come to condemn the material world, but in a super-cosmic act of humility becomes a creature Himself, born of a creature, born among creatures, born to be able to share His divinity with us who are nothing in the eyes of the universe, but everything in the eyes of the Creator. A God Who tells us we were created out of His love and for His love.

Hawking is wrong. Science hasn't changed everything. It hasn't changed the human heart. It has no power to do so. It cannot tell us the meaning of our lives in this world, it cannot extinguish our desire for eternal life, it cannot answer our fears when we face the tragedy of death, it cannot pardon our sins or help us grow in virtue. That is why God became man, to offer us all these things, to give us hope in Him. He came so that we might see the very face of God.

We know that we often get too caught up in this material world, but tonight let's be sure we get caught up in Him Who became a man, who took on physical matter for our sake, so that we do not end our lives here as a hopeless pile of ashes, as Hawking thinks. Rather may we end our days on this earth as people who will live forever in divine glory. Everything and everyone here is temporary and will change, and all will pass away but for those are in Christ we shall pass away to our true and everlasting home.