Scientific Study, a Hymn of Praise to God

Last week, Pope Benedict spoke about St. Albert the Great, Dominican scholar and bishop. St. Albert is one of my influences as a Dominican involved in science. Benedict said:

Above all, St. Albert shows that between faith and science there is no opposition, notwithstanding some episodes of misunderstanding recorded in history. A man of faith and prayer, as St. Albert the Great was, can cultivate serenely the study of the natural sciences and progress in the knowledge of the micro and macro cosmos, discovering the laws proper of matter, because all this concurs to feed the thirst for and love of God. The Bible speaks to us of creation as the first language through which God — who is supreme intelligence, who is Logos — reveals to us something of himself. The Book of Wisdom, for example, states that the phenomena of nature, gifted with grandeur and beauty, are as the works of an artist, through which, by analogy, we can know the Author of creation (cf. Wisdom 13:5). With a classic similarity in the Medieval Age and the Renaissance one can compare the natural world with a book written by God, which we read on the basis of several approaches of the sciences (cf. Address to the participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Oct. 31, 2008).

How many scientists, in fact, in the wake of St. Albert the Great, have carried forward their research inspired by wonder and gratitude before a world that, in the eyes of scholars and believers, seemed and seems the good work of a wise and loving Creator! Scientific study is transformed then into a hymn of praise. It was well understood by a great astrophysicist of our times, whose cause of beatification has been introduced, Enrico Medi, who wrote:

Oh, you mysterious galaxies ... I see you, I calculate you, I understand you, I study you and discover you, I penetrate you and I am immersed in you. From you I take the light and I do science, I take the motion and do science, I take the sparkling of colors and make poetry; I take you stars in my hands, and trembling in the unity of my being I raise you beyond yourselves, and in prayer I hand you to the Creator, that only through me you stars can adore (The Works. Hymn to Creation).

St. Albert the Great reminds us that between science and faith there is friendship, and that the men [and women] of science can undertake, through their vocation to the study of nature, a genuine and fascinating journey of sanctity.

Deus, fons et origo totius sapientiae, qui in illam exquirendam sanctum Albertum effecit magnum, gratiam vobis concedat, benedictionis suae largitatem infundat, atque suae tribuat sapientiae abundantiam.