First Talk: THE BIG BANG

In the NO BEGINNING -- was GOD.

God's breath hovered over a vastness of darkness, silence and peace. God's heartbeat pulsated in endless acres of emptiness -- an emptiness that was pregnant with life.

In a way that we cannot fully comprehend, that seamless space of peaceful silence was God.

And in God's breath and heartbeat -- was YOU.

In the NO BEGINNING.

Eons and eons ago -- in that time which cannot be measured, the promise of life was contracted into an infinitesimally small particle, so small that would not have seen it if you were there because in fact, it was space-less and it was time-less.

The promise of life was compressed energy, hot and dense.

As in everywhere else, God was also in that tiny particle of energy with a very special intent of love.

God was about to create the universe from within, by empowering it in a way that the universe would be able to participate with God in creating itself.

And so through immeasurable years, the energy moved on to greater and greater density transforming into a fireball.

About 14 billion years ago, at the exact, right moment, the fireball exploded mightily.

The energies flew apart, billowing out in all directions with incredible heat -- trillions of degree of heat.

The dispersal of the heat-energies created space, expanding that space more and more as the particles flashed forth further and further.

With this explosion, TIME BEGAN.

And Light came forth and shone everywhere, with no shadows, because there was nothing then.

This was the original energy of the universe.

People call it by different names: the Big Bang, the Flaring Forth, the Birth.

It was just the right moment.

Scientists say that if the explosion had taken place a fraction of a second earlier or later, the universe would never have come to be.

If the explosion had taken place a fraction of a second later, it could never have coalesced into concrete beings at a later stage; a fraction of a second earlier and it would have collapsed back on itself. It was by a slim, almost zero-margin of possibility that THE UNIVERSE CAME INTO BEING.

It was not by chance; it was divinely intended by God who was that energy within.

The mysterious "inness of God" here and in all the forms and beings that would emerge from it in the billions of years.

For a million years there was nothing but light and heat energy from the Big Bang in the vastness of space. It took all these million years for it to cool down. But the light remained in the galactic skies. Vestiges of that seemingly interminable heat energy remained for billions of years later in the form of fire.

Why did it take the universe so long to heat up and to cool down in the process of its becoming?

It was her way because it was God's way, God who was within the explosion, within the blocks of heat-energy everywhere, within the cooling down at last.

And you... you, in all this, was in the heartbeat of God.

This was the first of the four talks given to us during our Recollection -- an annual celebration of all personnel in our school -- a time to recollect the blessings and struggles in our lives; a time to recollect ourselves and our faith in God before we finally say our pledge of commitment and accept the commissioning of the Holy Spirit in our ecological thrust and educational advocacy.

It is indeed a perfect timing for us to re-learn our history, for it is only in re-discovering our forgotten origins that we become more grateful of who we are and what have we become.

It is also a perfect timing to seek God in the midst of all the environmental struggles we are going through, as people, as His co-creators -- we have in some ways followed another path -- the path of damnation, destroying the only world we could live in -- the world He has given us to take care and pro-create and co-create.

Let us not wait for our world to succumb itself to death... for when this world dies, we die with it, too.

So I invite you to journey with me in this great gift of BEING ALIVE.