Word to the Wise
Tuesday, February 7, 2017 - Tuesday in the 5th Week in Ordinary Time
[Gen 1:20—2:4a and Mark 7:1-13]Then God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground." God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them. [Genesis]
Yesterday the passage from Genesis stopped after the moon and stars were created! Today we begin to see "living things" appear - fish and birds and cattle and creeping things - and God sees it all as "good." But the center of this is the creation of the human being - the only creature made in "the image and likeness" of God! The theological and anthropological significance of this one creation is enormous and thousands of people have produced thousands of pages of reflection on it. As the college students I live near would say, "Awesome!"
The simple thought of being in the image and likeness of God speaks to the human person at the very moment of that person's creation! The enormity of abortion or the world-wide scandals of hunger and disease when resources are available but frustrated by greed and politics become all the more stark when placed alongside that simple thought. How can we allow such avoidable suffering for so many millions made in the image and likeness of God? How can we waste and "commodify" so much of the creation over which God has given us the stewardship? The response of Genesis to those questions will come tomorrow. Sufficient for this day is the realization that we are made by God for God. No scientific account of the millions of years of evolutionary development can change that simple fact. That very science exists because of God's gift of a mind to the human person! No "Big Bang" account of the origins of the universe changes any of Genesis except to say that God can make a very big creative noise! AMEN
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