While walking to lunch in the summer of 1950, Enrico Fermi, an Italian American physicist best known for inventing the first nuclear reactor, asked the following question of his colleagues: “If the universe is as old and as vast as it appears to be, why hasn’t the earth been visited by alien life forms?” Intelligent life forms should have evolved on countless planets across our galaxy long before we evolved here on earth.  Many could and should have developed space travel.  Fermi allegedly blurted out: “But where is everybody?!”  The renowned physicist’s question is now known as the Fermi Paradox.  

One answer to this question is known as the Great Filter.  In short, if intelligent life has, indeed, evolved on many other planets, perhaps it always self-destructs before it gains the capability for interstellar travel.  Perhaps, the Great Filter hypothesis contends, what we see happening to us on earth, namely that our technological evolution has outpaced our spiritual and moral evolution, has happened to all other species on all other life-producing planets in the universe as well.

We humans are a smart lot, but sometimes our brains get us into trouble.  We have developed weapons that can utterly destroy all of life as we know it, but we haven’t figured out how to wage peace.  We have invented all sorts of creative ways to extract resources from the earth, but somehow we lack the wisdom or will to preserve and protect those very same resources on which our lives depend. If there is any merit to the Great Filter theory, then we humans should take note and not allow our own technological advances to cause our own destruction.

And that’s where our faith comes in. We have journeyed so far down the technology road that I simply don’t believe that we are going to be able to engineer ourselves out of the problems we have created.  Further, our economic and political structures hold little promise in rescuing us. If the theory of the Great Filter is correct, then I believe the only way out is through a spiritual and moral conversion. We humans must learn new ways of living.

It is to this, at least in part, that Jesus was referring when he talked about the Kingdom of God. He taught a new moral way, grounding all relationships and all human behavior in love. With his own life he demonstrated that real love is rarely convenient and often entails substantial sacrifice. And he promised peace, abundant  life and eternal salvation to those who followed in this new way. 

The Way of Jesus is the work of the Church. If we do this work well through our own lives and if we do our part to teach others to do the same, we may very well be part of the salvation solution of our species and of this earth.  And maybe, just maybe, when future humans have traveled to some far-flung planet in some distant galaxy to visit other life forms, those life forms won’t be left wondering “But where is everybody.”

~Father Art