In The Beautiful Garden

Another few moments in a busy day.  I want to continue my reflections on the Book of Genesis which we are reading at daily Mass for the next couple of weeks.  I think it is important that we read this book and understand its message because it reveals the basic truths about who we are as human beings, truths that are under attack and denied today.  The Venerable Pope John Paul II drew on these passages as he began to write his Theology of the Body, and so we can see in that the importance of these inspired words for us as we face the culture of death and the attempt of secularism to undermine the family.

Today we see an interesting account of creation which reverses the order of the creation week.  One thing we need to understand as we read the accounts of creation in Genesis: they are not scientific accounts - they are theological - they teach us the meaning and purpose of creation not the manner in which it occurred.  As the Church has said and continues to say - it is up to science to explore how the world came into being, but it is the Church, through Scripture and Sacred Tradition which teaches us why it came into being and who started the process. 

In this second account, only a few verses (Gen 2:4-9), we see man created first as the waters fall on to the land - God forms man from dust and then breathes the breath of life into him and he becomes a living soul.  That is interesting.  Can that be seen as a hint of evolution?  Just a question.  The waters fall onto the land, man comes into being and then, at some point, God gives him a living soul.  Interesting. 

Then, Genesis continues, a garden is planted in Eden in the east, and vegetation springs into life.  The message is obvious - it is created for man.   While men and women are part of creation, it is brought into being for them.  At my homily at Mass this morning I said that this is God's providence - he provides for us, give us a home and loves us, not with mere feelings but with life and the means to live it and flourish, and we are prepared for a great destiny.  In terms of our origins this is good news.  

However, there are limits.   Though man is the at the pinnacle of creation, he is still a creature, and though certain things may seem to be within his reach, there is a boundary which he must not pass. In the garden there are two trees - the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, man must not eat of the second tree -he can eat of all the rest, including it seems of the Tree of Life which confers eternal life, but not the other.  This is interesting.  The Tree of Life will confer eternal life, and God has no problem with men and women eating of that - we are destined for eternal life.   The other is a no no because it will make men and women think they are god.

We love to push beyond the limits.  It might be said that God was looking for trouble planting the forbidden tree in the garden, and say he was, perhaps, a little foolish in drawing man's attention to it.  But yet it had to be that way, for this represents our freedom as human beings, a freedom which is necessary if we are to know love.  God created us to love and love is a choice - no freedom, no choice, no love.  It was a big risk and it did not turn out well at the start, but the remedy, as we know, was already planned.

In The Beginning

What a wonderful two weeks we have ahead of us!  The first readings of our Masses are taken from the Book of Genesis.  I have always loved that book, as a child I would read it again and again for the stories, and then move onto Genesis: The Sequel aka Exodus, and then, in the mood for adventure, skip over the three unpronounceables to Joshua and Judges.  

As I grew older I began to understand Genesis and then as I lived in the world I was convinced of the truths it teaches - experience of human life confirms its wisdom.  If we want to understand human nature, it's all there in Genesis.  By a happy coincidence I am reading Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch's commentary on the book and it is bliss, well worth reading. So my understanding of the book, but also of human nature, is deepening. 

In today's first reading we have the story of Creation, a most controversial topic today.  The battle between Darwinian Evolutionists and Literal Creationists is heated.  I share Pope John Paul II's position - evolution is most likely what happened - we see evidence of it every year in the annual bout of flu which makes its way around the world - each year new strains evolve to keep scientists busy trying to find a vaccine.  That said I do not believe the universe is a product of chance, as philosopher Jean Paul Sartre put it after his conversion, but rather created by God who intended it to evolve in a particular way.   At the heart of it, the pinnacle: man and woman.  Reading the account of creation, organised in a liturgical manner, we are led to reflect on the magnificence of God's creative act.  Out of nothing this beautiful universe emerges - out of chaos, order. 

This is something in evolution which, I believe, reveals the intention of God - there is so much order - the laws of nature are not mere chance events, but true laws - ordered.  This might bring us to a reflection on natural law - that natural morality which seeks to move man out of moral chaos into moral order, in harmony with God and his creation, a law which is written in the hearts of men and women.  The whole question of natural law is one much disputed today; just recently I heard an advocate for same-sex marriage decry the brutality and tyranny of natural law in its ordering of human sexuality along the lines of male and female.

That said, it is natural for us to nurture order in our lives and in our liturgy and we can see this process happening in recent years, most particularly during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI.  After swirling around in the ideological chaos which broke out after Vatican II thanks to misinterpretations, and maybe even the mischievousness of some, the Church is coming back to that order which has always been the hallmark of her life - the order she finds in the Heart of her Divine Founder.  The new translation of the Missal, or as one of my readers called it "the corrected translation", is one element in this return to order, the means through which the Church can overcome the liturgical chaos which has reigned supreme in some places.  

Each reform of the Church re-echoes the creation of the world and Pentecost as the Holy Spirit sweeps across the Church renewing her and preparing her for the mission which is about to unfold.  We live in interesting times, exciting times and, yes, difficult times, but we all have our part to play.