Here is a real surprise. You can now purchase certified solar eclipse glasses for as little as $7.00 on Amazon. Of course, you may not need to use them until 2045, when the next total eclipse occurs, but why wait until the very last minute? Yes, brothers and sisters, the solar eclipse came and went on April 8. The eclipse provided an economic boom for Southern Illinois, and, I suspect, for Amtrak, which runs three daily trains to Carbondale. Although Chicago was not in “the path of totality” (We only got 94% of it), plenty of people here stopped what they were doing to take a look at the sky with their specially prepared solar viewing devices. Our front yard proved to be a popular viewing location. I was surprised how bright it was during the eclipse, even with only 6% of the sun illuminating us. The sun is a bright bulb, no doubt about it.

From the very earliest days of recorded history, people have seen a religious or spiritual significance in such marvels in the sky. In many cultures the sun was one of the most important gods. So, any darkening of the sun was a bad omen. Two of the world’s most prominent religions have a total eclipse like phenomenon related to their founding. In Islam, the sky darkened when the Prophet Muhammed’s son died; and in the Gospels, the sky darkened as Jesus hung on the cross. Through the centuries Christian groups have interpreted a solar eclipse as sign of God’s judgment on the world or a sign of the impending rapture, when those who hold to right belief would be raptured out in advance of the final judgment. Among those who see an eclipse as sign of impending disaster is Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of evangelist Billy Graham and herself a prolific author and speaker. However, she adds, “When you look at the world, you don’t need an eclipse to know that things are getting really dangerous. Maybe it’s telling us it’s time to get right with God and the people in our lives, so that we have no regrets.”

An article in USA Today quotes Pastor Eric Moffett of Coryell Community Church in Gatesville, TX, which was in the “path of totality” as saying, “An eclipse is yet another opportunity to witness the handiwork of God that exists in the universe. We aren’t looking for any omens in the cosmos, but we are using this as an opportunity to, for a little over four minutes, be reminded that we live in a world made by God and sustained by his love and goodness.”

A similar approach is taken by Catholic blogger, Tim Clark, who writes as a father of eight children. “Consider that a total solar eclipse is almost universally acknowledged to be one of the most incredibly beautiful sights in all of nature. But we must stop for a moment to consider the fact that, for this beauty to even be possible, the sun and the moon need to be precisely the same relative size in the sky. We might simply take for granted that a planet’s sun and moon are precisely proportionate to each other. However, there is no scientific explanation or necessity why this should be the case Indeed, astronomers haven’t observed any examples of this type of perfect moon / sun relationship elsewhere in the observable universe. The official explanation is: there is no explanation; it’s just a very, very, lucky coincidence.

“I would rather believe that God simply never tires of ways of delighting us. Jesus tells us that we should become like little children. He further tells us that we are to be perfect, as his Father is perfect. It is the delightful things in nature like this that make me realize that God is, in a sense, most childlike. Children create little drawings or paintings and run to their parents exclaiming, ‘Look! Look at what I’ve made for you!’ God does the same. He took the entire universe and fashioned it in a way that we should find pleasing and beautiful. In doing so, he too exclaims, ‘Look! Look at what I’ve made for you.’”

So, regardless of whether one believes in God or not or attaches any specific religious meaning to an eclipse or not, this rare celestial wonder was something that caused millions of people to interrupt their routine for a few moments or for a few days, get out of their own little world, and look upward and outward, and think about this grand universe that exists outside of the tiny portion of it that we occupy. Looking at the bigger picture can trigger anything from a spiritual awakening to a deeper commitment to caring for the natural world, to an opportunity to emerge from our own personal darkness into a bright light. For people of faith, the eclipse reminds us how tiny we are, and yet how big a place we occupy in God’s heart.

                                   Fr. Joe