For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.

And I wonder: who or what makes the child within me leap for joy? And I wonder: who or what can restore my essential innocence before God? And I wonder: who or what instills in me a sense of wonder at the beauty and miracle of life? Patrick Kavanagh, an Irish poet and writer, in his poem entitled 'Advent' captures something of the lost innocence of childhood when he writes:

Here, it seems, Kavanagh laments the lost innocence of his childhood, and yearns for the penitential simplicity and sense of wonder his childhood Advent memories evoke. For Kavanagh, less is better than more, and simplicity of living more enriching than the trappings of wealth. If he were alive today, I wonder how he might reflect on the super-abundant wealth of the western world; or what he would have to say about the information age that consumes so much of our time and energy.

It seems to me that in spite of the tremendous technological leaps we have made in recent decades, many of these advances run the risk of seriously eroding the human capacity to think, feel and imagine. The more we rely on artificial intelligence to do our thinking for us, the less we are inclined to draw from our own spiritual resources - our God-given wisdom, intuition and imagination. Let's just pause for a moment and consider the miracle and mystery of our existence in the universe.

Every morning we get out of bed, it seems to be simply a matter of putting our feet on the floor then standing up. Yet the prerequisites for this act are complex, including parents and a line of ancestors stretching back. An ultimate condition is the existence of conscious life in the universe. Now thanks to 20th century scientific discoveries, we know that the development of all life on earth depends on a complex sequence of events. Stars and then planets have formed, then those first generation stars made of simple elements like hydrogen and helium must have forged in their fiery centers more complex elements like carbon, zinc and iron. Then those stars needed to age and explode, thereby releasing those complex elements to be folded into the mix that formed second - and third - generation stars like our sun. Planets heavy in those elements must have also developed, where biological evolution can take place. And this is our story: we are literally made of fossilized stars! Put simply, we are stardust. And this gives me pause for wonder and praise. And so my inner child's imagination and sense of wonder can come out to play.

And what has all this got to do with Mary, Elizabeth, John the Baptist and the birth of Jesus? Well, Dominican Fr. Cletus Wessels, author of Jesus in the New Universe Story, recently said in an interview: "To say that the coming of Jesus is the ultimate goal of the universe story is a shortsighted vision of the story. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus had a powerful impact on Western culture and the Christian community, but the God of the universe story unfolds within the vastness of the unknown future in ways beyond our comprehension. What is essential is to recognize the intimate, loving presence of God from within the whole universe.

I thank and praise God for the incredible advances we have made in our world. I thank and praise God for the life-saving breakthroughs we have made in medicine and scientific research. I thank and praise God for the deeper understanding we now have of the universe story and our integral place in it. And I hope that all that we have achieved, and all that we have produced and all that we have accumulated will not thwart the purity and innocence of the human spirit. As I wonder . .

Who or what makes the child within me leap for joy? And as I wonder: who or what can restore my essential innocence before God? And as I wonder: who or what instills in me a sense of wonder at the beauty and miracle of life?