There was a time in my life when believing in God was believing in a certainty. As a boy growing up in an inner-city Catholic parish in Philadelphia, I was surrounded by a large family that included a sister and two aunts who were nuns; many uncles, aunts, and cousins who lived just minutes from my home; and a vibrant neighborhood that gathered every Sunday at any one of many Masses. Two sons of St. Anne’s became priests, and their names were known to us all. In that parish, belief was omnipresent; unbelief — a senseless claim — unheard of.
Now, in the last third of my life, belief is a thin mantle that sits lightly on my shoulders. Mysteries, questions and even doubts seem to proliferate, and faith is less substantial. Genocides, war, starvation, purges — they’ve ravaged every century of human history. Even learning the size of the universe shakes my universe: How is it possible that any God in whose image we are made — who is like us, in other words — could have created trillions of galaxies and uncountable planets, this incomprehensible expanse? That’s a question I cannot answer.
The Roches’ “Star of Wonder” is not a Christmas song to celebrate the arrival of the savior. It sings not of the promise fulfilled: God become man. It’s a song of questions and uncertainty. A lonely shepherd, in night’s deepest hours, looks to the heavens and a strange bright light.
Star of wonder
Are you just a shining star
She is unsure of its substance: star, or more than star? She is unsure of her response:
Wonder what you want of me
And she is unsure of her responsibility:
Star of wonder in the heavens
Are you just a shining star
Or should I follow you tonight
I no longer see with the eyes of a child. Rather, with the ideas of an adult, I see mystery spreading. To me, to live in faith isn’t to live in clarity. Instead, it is to live with questions I cannot answer, to make peace with what I don’t know, may never know. For me, faith isn’t found in the certainty of answers; it’s in the commitment to the search.
In verse three, the shepherd leaves her post, presumably to act on what she has seen. I imagine that she is not so much following the star as following her questions.
On Christmas Eve, I, too, will look for a bright star in the heavens. I’ll ask myself, “Is that the star I should follow, the one I’ve been searching for?”
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