Advent is the time of the year to look beyond the decorations strung from our street lights and see the stars and planets scattered across the night sky. This is a time to look over the shoulders of the Magi and to study the heavens. The galaxy has much to teach us.

Among the many laws of astrophysics which govern the push and pull of the universe is that of gravity. Granted, I don’t claim to know very much about that technical mystery, but I see its effects everywhere.

Things fall to the ground rather than floating out into space because the Earth seems to pull them close to itself. If they were further away, like the astronauts, for example, they might be perilously freed from that tug and could disappear off into outer darkness.

A far vaster example can also be found in the interrelationship of the sun and its planets. Gravity holds them together. Each planet spins in an orbit around the sun which holds the planet at a certain distinctive distance.Venus or Mars or Earth might be poised with power to go off, fleeing the center of our little celestial neighborhood; we label that inclination “centrifugal force.”

On the other hand, the gravitational force of the sun is powerful and a planet could respond helplessly by plunging into fiery destruction; that could be called “centripetal force.” Center-fleeing and center-seeking balance each other and maintain a healthy distance.

Pulling objects inward toward the center and the objects themselves pulling away from that center keep the planets in place. Both forces are necessary for balance.

I suppose that the same forces operate emotionally in the sphere of human relationships in a family as children grow to maturity. At first parents keep them close at hand, usually within an area delineated by the yard; those same parents become very stern if anything attracts the kids out into the road. As children grow, however, the limits are enlarged and the rules are relaxed to allow movement out into the neighborhood, and then out into the city and finally off on their own. The bonds that hold a family together change. They become more elastic at times, but children and parents seem linked together in some way forever.

Young people keep trying to pull away into independence, and parents keep trying to maintain the right level of relationship as the years unfold. It’s a challenge for both groups and wise parents gradually allow their maturing teenagers to make decisions and learn from possible mistakes. The laws of the relationship may change from time to time, but they still continue to operate.

Once again, it seems to me, though in different ways, we find the centrifugal and centripetal forces at work. They function everywhere.

Now what I really want to think about is the way in which the Catholic Church, especially in the West, continues to exist in various historical ages. The church is a communion of communions, a constellation of various local churches each uniquely related to the Church of Rome.

Sometimes they experience an increasing centralization, and Catholics are pulled toward the center. Regularly during the 19th century, for example, Catholics sought to tighten their bonds with Rome to protect themselves from the hostile national control of their civil governments. That was often the case in areas of religious education of youth where the churches of France, Germany and Ireland insisted on freedom and appealed to Rome for support.

At other times the movement was rather toward greater national and cultural independence from Roman control. That occurred most often when a local church was concerned with permeating its own culture with faith, and finding a voice of its own for the proclamation of the Gospel.

Centralization and decentralization, almost like inhaling and exhaling, are corresponding ways by which the church exercises its mission over the centuries. Both are necessary, but not always in the same ratio.

With the move away from the use of Latin in our liturgies (which served to provide a clear uniformity as well as unity to our expressions of faith), we Catholics look for other ways to express the unity we share by God’s grace. The vernacular enables us to profess our Catholic faith and to express our own culture.

Care for accurate translations of our Sacramentary and Lectionary are important tasks. They cannot be so woodenly literal, however, as to become clumsy in English. This seems to be the case these days. It’s the larger picture which is most important … finding the right relation to the center!

Once again, maintaining the correct balance between central unity and cultural diversity is a Catholic obligation as well as a gift of grace. Unity in diversity is the work of the Holy Spirit.

The God of the universe and the laws of the heavens still have much to teach us, and we have much to learn.

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Another remarkable book which deserves a place on a person’s stack of winter reading is Mark Haddon’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- time.” Although the language may be a bit rough in spots, the novel offers an extraordinary journey into the world of an adolescent fellow who lives within his world of autism.