A Collision of Two Kinds

  Having been raised Catholic, I am very familiar with The Lord’s Prayer and the ‘Hail Mary’, two prayers I was taught to say every night before bed as a child. However, it was not until this past week that I realized these two prayers, recognized by almost every Christian today, originated in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke respectively. See below:

Matthew 6:9-13

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from 

evil: For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

Luke 1:28

Hail, thou that are highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. 

Luke 1:42

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

The ‘Hail Mary’

Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

While the prayers differ slightly from the original Gospels, this seems mostly to be a matter of translation, though the ‘Hail Mary’ has two distinct parts, praise and supplication, with only the former originating in the Gospel of Luke. Furthermore, after our class discussion on Thursday over the crucifixion scene of Jesus, for the first time, I seriously considered why the cross is such an important symbol in Christianity today when its only original purpose was its role in the death of Jesus. As Dr. Hamlin put it, “It would be like another religion having an electric chair” as their main defining symbol. 

Considering this, I realize that I finally have enough background in Biblical material to understand the origins of a large portion of the Catholic teachings and church practices I was raised with. While reading this week, I recognized many of the songs that we sing in church, and I contextualized many of the prayers that we chant together. For instance, every Sunday, when the priest presents the Eucharist to the congregation, we all say together, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed”, which is strikingly similar to a passage in the Gospel of Matthew where a centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant. When Jesus expresses his willingness to help, the centurion responds with, “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the world only, and my servant shall be healed” (Matthew 8:8). Another passage from Matthew that vividly evokes childhood church life is the scene of Jesus entering Jerusalem as “the multitudes… cried… Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest”  (Matthew 21:9). This passage is the basis of another song we sing in church in preparation of receiving the Eucharist, the body and the blood of Christ. Another interesting thing about this passage is that before reading the Gospel of Matthew, I never knew the meaning or etymology of the word ‘Hosanna’ whose original meaning was ‘save us’ in Hebrew though has been adopted by Christianity as an exclamation of adoration and praise. This follows logically when considering how Christians believe Jesus to be the Messianic King and Messiah, the savior and ultimate redeemer of sin for mankind. Thus, when asking Jesus to save us, we also thank him for the salvation of mankind in God’s Kingdom which is to come.

The JWST photo for this week highlights two merging galaxies that have a rate of star formation twenty times higher than that of the Milky Way. The presence of so many newly formed stars is why the merging galaxies appear so blue; young stars often burn brighter and hotter, emitting higher energy, shorter wavelengths of light. Additionally, the abundance of nebulae and star-forming gas like hydrogen is what lends the galaxies much of their reds and pinks. All of this and more is what makes galaxies with active star formation often much more beautiful than other galaxies which are commonly white, fuzzy, uniform clouds. I like to think of these two colliding galaxies as the collision between my childhood Catholic experience and the knowledge I have acquired through this class. Another thing I forgot to mention about star formation is that it often spikes with galaxy collisions, which I believe is incredibly indicative of what is happening in my own ‘collision’. The overlap between what I read in the Bible and my past Christian teachings has caused me to think much more critically about Christianity. In a biological sense, this overlap has quite literally changed my brain forever, creating countless new synapses while strengthening neural connections and pathways I already had. These synapses are like the newly formed stars of the colliding galaxies above, and just as active star formation makes these colliding galaxies gorgeously splendid, my reflection on past Christian teachings makes my interest in the history of Christianity and Christian theology all the more vivid. 

As a sort of final metaphor, another factor contributing to active star formation is lack of an active galactic nucleus. Active galactic nuclei are the products of supermassive black holes with chaotic accretion disks and relativistic particle jets streaming away from the black hole. The more massive a black hole, the more mass it can consume, but ironically, more massive black holes are also able to eject more mass in the form of gas out of their host galaxies. As a result, galaxies with incredibly massive black holes at their centers often push star-forming gas away from themselves, resulting in a premature end to star formation within those galaxies. With such active star formation, these two colliding galaxies may not have very massive black holes, which in a highly metaphorical sense represents the lack of darkness within my soul as I begin to learn more about God, Jesus, and Christianity as a whole.

Works Cited

“Messiah.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 7 Nov. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah.

“The Origin of the Hail Mary.” Hozana, https://hozana.org/en/prayer/hail-mary/origin.

“The Origin of The Lord's Prayer.” Hozana, https://hozana.org/en/prayer/our-father/origin.

Ryden, Barbara. “When Galaxies Collide!” Astronomy 162: Professor Barbara Ryden, 26 Feb. 2003, https://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/ryden.1/ast162_8/notes35.html.

Webster, Noah. “Hosanna.” Merriam-Webster.com, G. & C. Merriam Co.