In Psalm 19, we pray “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands …. The sun rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.” This psalm can lead to prayer that places us in the immense space and time of the universe. Our sun and earth are part of the Milky Way Galaxy, a spiral galaxy that contains about 100–400 billion stars, besides the sun. But the Milky Way is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe! The psalm prayer now has expanded far beyond what we can see. We are a tiny dot in the universe, and yet, as Jesus said, “…even the very hairs on your head have been counted by my Heavenly Father.” (Matthew 10:30). As we pray, we can place ourselves in the space of the universe. But we can also pray in the immensity of time. The universe formed from a single “bang” over 26 billion years ago. Our earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago. Humans are newcomers. Our bodies and brains began to take their current shape about 300,000 years ago. We are slowly evolving towards the human Christ, the Omega Point, but we have a long way to go. This kind of prayer would be well-known to the mystical saints, such as St. John of the Cross and St. Catherine of Siena. They were keenly aware of the immensity of God and the smallness of man. It God would speak to us today, he might say, as he did to Job, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?” (Job 38:4). I find it comforting to place myself in such an immense, beautiful story! – – – Fr. Jim