Word to the Wise
Monday, February 7, 2011 - Monday in the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
[Genesis 1:1-9 and Mark 6:53-56]In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw how good the light was......
These words open the Bible. There are few portions of the Bible that are more majestic in their scope and rhythm. They respond to the deep human need to understand where "it all comes from." Why something and not nothing? To the person of faith, God is at the origin of all being. Yet there are those who would dismiss Genesis altogether and those who would insist that creation occurred in exactly the way described. Neither of these "camps" should be a source of overwhelming concern to us.
Although it took awhile for the Catholic church, officially, to accept the fact that the account of creation in Genesis was not written for the understanding of the universe that we now possess, the Book of Genesis can still be a source of inspiration to our meditation on the incredible scope of what we are continually learning about what our tiny planet can see "out there!" (St. Augustine once wrote that the Bible was written to teach us how to go to heaven and how the heavens go!) The majesty and beauty of creation is reflected in the majesty and beauty of the words of the first chapter of Genesis. Whether or not there was a "Big Bang" or some other celestial physical event, we believe that that event is an event of God's creation. The passages from Genesis that will form the first scriptures for the next couple of weeks or so can serve as a "platform" for reflection on profound truths of our faith.
Perhaps today we can benefit from the incredible reality that is "light," and what it means to us. There are physical and poetic understandings of it. How could such a reality come into being? Light, alone, can remind us of the incredible power of God. AMEN
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