Word to the Wise
Monday, February 11, 2013 - Monday in the 5th Week in Ordinary Time
[Gen 1:1-19 and Mark 6:53-56]In the beginning when God crreated 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....
With these majestic words, the Bible and the Book of Genesis open to us a vast world of beauty and controversy! The poetic vision of the author of Genesis is consistently placed alongside scientific theories of the origins of the universe and declared to be fantasy and the product of human imagination, bearing no resemblance to the "true" state of things. But science and poetry should not be enemies. The author of Genesis was certainly not thinking about the "Big Bang" or any other theory of physics any more than a poet would loook at a rose with the eye of a chemist determining what makes it red or yellow or white! I believe that our brothers and sisters who are fighting the battle of "creationism" are trying to introduce faith into a scientific discussion that often excludes any transcendent values. No matter how the scientist analyzes the bloom of the rose, the beauty and truth of that rose still remain, and the scientist who fails to see that beauty and truth is not really a good scientist because he or she is eliminating an important aspect of the subject!
The Book of Genesis, like all the books of the Bible, is a book of faith. St. Augustine is quoted as saying, "The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go!" Every issue of the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC brings the poetic beauty of creation to the eye and shows how God is constantly at work. If we eliminate the eye of faith, we are truly impoverished. AMEN
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