For This We are Created

The Christian story of creation is unique.  All ancient cultures and ethnicities have fascinating myths of origin: stories of gods, goddesses and creatures whose activities, quarrels and preferences explain the unpredictable world.  These myths always begin with an already created world of matter, space and time.  Typically, the god/hero falls from the sky, or is thrust from the earth, meeting with opposition, striving for order or contributing to chaos, and so forth.      

Apart from this, as C. S. Lewis points out, the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis stands alone.   Here creation is authored by an unknown being who breathes life and order into earth, nature and humanity through an invisible breath, or Word.   The author of this creation is identified as God.  The force which causes the subsequent chaos is humanity itself, given free will, our choosing our own lights: Original Sin. 

"The Christian story of creation is unique." 

Science offers another explanation.  The brilliant scientist, Stephen Hawking, at the age of 15 declared: the universe, eons ago, erupted from a black hole and one day, eons to come, would be likewise subsumed: into a black hole.  Time, space, matter, all will cease to exist as we know it.  The universe will first expand, then contract, then end.  Science is tracking the expansion of the universe which is now slowing down.  It will all end one day in nothingness.

It is fascinating that the two bookends of creation are scientifically described as coming from, and one day ending in a black hole, or “nothingness.”  For just as Genesis describes creation out of a nameless void, so too the Book of Revelations predicts its end, in time, space and matter.  Yet in faith, and according to scripture, the beginning of creation and its goal have an entirely different meaning.  For the author of creation stands outside of the apparent nothingness, or void, and can only be recognized and named as God.

"For the author of creation stands outside of the apparent nothingness, or void, and can only be recognized and named as God."

Within the bookends of creation comes one event which brings purpose and hope to it all:  The life of Jesus Christ.  The life of Jesus, whose nativity we have just celebrated, is an offer of new life and transcendence of the world, given to all who believe.  For creation is not of “nothing,” it is of God.  Not only from a Creator who breathed time, space and matter into being, but a loving Father who sent his Son to walk with us, to strive, suffer, struggle and rejoice, and to carry us one day to live eternally with him.

Within the life of Jesus comes one central event that once, and for all time, establishes the Father’s true love and purpose: The Cross.  This is the central point, the crossroads of the bookends of creation.  The suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus transform defeat into victory, giving the truth of creation, that God loves us so much he sent his son, Jesus, to suffer and die that we might all have eternal life, that our lives not end in “nothingness.”

"Within the bookends of creation comes one event which brings purpose and hope to it all:  The life of Jesus Christ."

Within three weeks we will celebrate Ash Wednesday and begin the Lenten Journey.  Signed with the Cross on our foreheads with the ashes of mortality, we will once again begin the reflection that leads to Easter.  We now prepare for the real meaning of the journey of creation.  That all might be made one day whole, healed and returned to God our Father and Creator, through the sacrifice of his Son.  And that our relationship with Jesus become the focus of our lives.  It is for this that we are created. 

+Most Reverend Stephen J. Berg

Bishop of Pueblo

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