In the final hours before the eclipse...

Yes, it is just hours away, and I regret that I did not think sooner about the total eclipse in a “catechetical setting,” but here we are. Margaret and I are not driving north from Orlando to see this eclipse; we are going overseas in a few weeks, and you can only do so many trips. However, in 2017 we drove nine hours from our Florida home to Clemson University near the South Carolina/Georgia border for that year’s August total eclipse.
 
Clemson is not a Catholic university, but it is an attractive place to study and the village adjoining the school was quaint and pleasurable. Clemson advertised and hosted an “eclipse viewing” on campus with the science faculty on hand to chat, and an innumerable number of kindly student hosts in the “quad.” [I said to myself, “Boy, this is like an ultra-friendly parish.”] All the buildings were open for water, air conditioning, and clean bathroom facilities as it was 100 degrees that August afternoon. About 50,000 folks in all gathered on the campus. Overall, people were moved in many emotional directions in the few minutes of totality. For a 9-minute professional video of the Clemson kids’ joyous reaction to totality taped in the quad, check this. On the other hand, The Weather Channel’s Stephanie Abrams cried on the air as she checked in from the west coast viewing site where she was stationed. Link here.
 
Margaret and I decided that we would rather watch the eclipse alone, and we found the perfect spot—an elevated tee on the university golf course—all by ourselves. The eclipse experience itself was so different from what I thought it might be. The darkness is surprisingly sudden…for all the hour or so that the moon starts “eating the sun,” it is not dark—rather, the sky turns a bright orange. The photos on the Café social media posts were taken two minutes before totality. And then, suddenly, I was surrounded by a 360-degree twilight on the horizon as the final seconds of the moon’s transit reached the sun, in those final seconds, the sun is visible only from between the valleys of the moon, creating an effect known as “Bailey’s Beads.” And then, total coverage and the emergence of the corona, the flares of hot gas shooting from the sun that we cannot see in daylight.
 
Our time in total eclipse at Clemson lasted two minutes. By contrast, the 2024 eclipse in places like Buffalo will last over four minutes as the moon is closer to the earth for this eclipse than in the 2017 event. Total eclipses will not continue to infinity. The Planet Jupiter exercises a gravitational pull on our moon [how dare they!] and is pulling the moon further from the earth until the moon is too small to fully cover our sun. I do not foresee this as an issue on Monday, though…. nor in anyone’s lifetime currently alive.
 
As a personal experience, Margaret and I felt that seeing it alone as a couple was a shared marriage moment we will never forget. If you can, experience an eclipse with that very special person—a spouse, a partner, an intimate friend—who understands how truly lucky you both are to see a total eclipse in your lifetime, and the divine miracle that is creation. Many people are drawn by the metaphysical/spiritual power of the event. It is my understanding that authorities are planning for one million people to view Monday’s eclipse at Niagara Falls…as if to see two great wonders of creation in one cosmic sweep. [On a slightly less heavenly note, watching the three bridges over the Niagara River—the Peace Bridge, the Rainbow Bridge next to the Falls, and the Lewiston-Queenstown Bridge—manage all those cars might be an astronomic feat, too. And if the stranded barge about the Horseshoe Falls breaks loose after a century and finally goes over the edge during totality, I will be on my knees for the Second Coming!
 
I will confess that at the peak moments of the 2017 eclipse I was rushing to check off my list of things to explore and see. I was an avid astronomer as a boy with my little telescope who went faithfully to the Buffalo Museum of Science for its Thursday night public viewings. I saw the rings of Saturn with my very own eyes from the Museum observatory’s telescope. And, I read voraciously on astronomy, including “Martian Canals” [a big topic till about 1960] and total eclipses, which I never thought I would see. So, in the 2017 eclipse I looked hard for Planet Mercury, which is extremely hard to see from earth with the naked eve, ordinarily, because it is so close to the sun. An Albert Einstein theory was proven during a 1919 eclipse when telescopes and cameras discovered, during totality, that the light from Mercury was distorted by the sun before it reached the earth. Good thing I was not Albert’s wing man, because I never found Mercury during the 2017 event.
 
What I did see were the thousands upon thousands of little crescents on the ground beneath my feet. These appear just before and particularly after totality. After our eclipse in 2017 Margaret and I walked the half-mile back to our AirB&B on a bed of Disneyesque sun crescents.
 
RELIGIOUS OPPORTUNITIES?
 
Obviously, I am a little late for practical parochial suggestions. On the internet I came across several parishes around the country which are hosting viewings and parish picnics on their ground, not to mention places to park. I was hoping that the subject of the eclipse might make its way into the homily of last night’s Mass [in 1969 the Sunday Masses of July 21 were focused—at least in my neighborhood—on the upcoming landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon later that evening.] Unfortunately, last night we got an indecipherable stew centered on the mystical writings of Mother Faustina which was inserted—without much liturgical or theological thought—by Pope John Paul II even though the Church has celebrated “Good Shepherd Sunday” three weeks after Easter, for centuries.
 
But that is small beer today. The wonders of God’s heavens and earth take us out of our sense of self-importance and remind us that it is a miracle we are even here, and that we tend the tiniest speck. The early medieval Church Father St. Anselm wrote, in so many words that God is “that than which no greater can be conceived.” If you are lucky enough to see the partial or total eclipse tomorrow, you may be overwhelmed or too preoccupied to think through the theology of the event as it is happening. This was my first experience, personally.
 
But the image of a black sun surrounded by a fiery corona will stay with you, implanted in your imagination, a visual sacramental of the loving power of God. Since I saw the 2017 eclipse, the Webb telescope space probe has been launched and is revealing both the size of the universe and its age. We are seeing entirely new galaxies at distances of 13.5 billion light years, and for what purpose? To reveal the infinitude of God…who lives out there and who lives in the soul of our mind and hearts.
 
On Sunday, July 21, 1969, my congregation prayed Psalm 8 as we approached the moon to land for the first time. You can pray this with and beyond the eclipse:
 
Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
    in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants
    you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
what is humankind that you are mindful of us,
    human beings that you care for us?
 
You have made us a little lower than the angels
    and crowned us with glory and honor.
You made us rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under our feet:
 all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
 the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.
 Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!
 
 
Use your glasses!