Why does God create?
Vatican I said this
God does not creates out of need
God needs nothing
God is God
Without the world, God will be completely perfect
Therefore, why did God create?
Vatican I said: "So as to manifest and share His Glory"
It's a wonderful answer reflective on the long tradition
You know what it means brothers and sisters?
It means that the entire universe has been loved into existence.
What´s Love?
Love, Thomas Aquinas said, is willing the good of the other as other.
Love is not primarily a feeling,
though it can be accompanied by feeling
Love is a great act of the will
When I say: I desire your good, not for my sake but for yours
To love is to break out of the black hole of the ego and say: my life is about You
So, listen
In regards to the whole of the Universe,
Love is the ground,
because God does not need the world.
But God has willed it into existence.
What else does Creation say to us?
Creation says that non-violence is the fundamental reality. How come?
It´s true!
Listen, go back to the all the old and ancient myths
People wants to bring the gods and godesses back
I don´t know, I'm glad they´re gone
Look at the old myths
god or the gods bring order precisely through violence
by conquering another god, by conquering other sets of gods
by wrestling something into submission
Violence leading to order, that is the old lie by the way.. .
believed from the epic of Gilgamesh all the way to Rambo
that´s the great myth
but listen to our tradition
God creates ex nihilo, God creates from nothing
That means, in a sheerly generous non-violent act, God speaks the world into existence.
He doesn't wrestle anything into submission, doesn't conquer anyone,
but now God wills through a sheer act of love the whole world into existence
Now, now read the Sermon on the Mount with new eyes
When Jesus said love your enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for those who maltreat you
he's not just saying it is nice to be nice, you see what he´s saying is
live in such way that you are congruent with the deepest grain of the Universe
that's what creation means, nonviolence, is the fundamentally real thing
What else does Creation means?
It means, whether we like it or not, we are connected to each other
Thomas Merton said, "Prayer is finding the place in You, where you are here and now being created by God."
Isn´t that a cool definition of prayer?
To find that place, right now, where you are being love and spoken into existence.
When you find that place in you, you find the same place in me
and the same space in him, and the same space in her
and the same space in "Brother Sun" and "Sister Moon."
When Francis said that, he was not whistling dixie, that's good Catholic metaphysics
Because of the Creation we are all link to each other through the "center" that we share
Now read again the ethics of the Bible, it's not just saying it's nice to be nice
It's saying that you must acknowledge by the way you live, that what connects us is always more basic and always more powerful than what divides us.
We are ontological siblings. Here´s what I mean. We are brothers and sisters at the most fundamental level of our being. That's what creation means.
What else?
Look in that great symbolic story in the book of Genesis
What does God give to Adam and Eve?
Practically full reign in the garden
by the way the garden, the place of life
St. Irenaeus said this: "The Glory of God is a human being fully alive."
God has zero interest in being our rival, zero interest in keeping us down
Look, God wants for us to be fully alive
And so He gives Adam and Eve practically full reign in the garden
Eat of all the trees, save one, I'll get there, save one
You know what Church Fathers had read from that wonderful liberty in the garden?
They read it as God's permission for science and art, conversation, politics, friendship ...
all that makes life rich and wonderful.
That's what God is saying, go for it, be fruitful, multiply, eat of all the trees in the garden
That is what God wants for us, life, life, life, fully alive
Look at the figure of Adam. Oh how the Church Fathers love this!
Adam gives names to all the animals
He cataloged them, katalogon. He namsd them according to the "logos" which God has placed in them.
Adam, therefore, is the first scientist and first philosopher.
You know, friends, that is why the conflict between science and religion are always tragic.
What does all science rely on?
The intelligibility of the world.
Every scientist, biologist, chemist, psychologist, whoever, every scientist must believe that reality is fundamentally intelligible, it can be known.
Where does that conviction come from?
From this deep mystical religious intuition that whole world has been spoken in to being
In the Beginning was the Word: INTELLIGENCE
And everything came to BE through that Word
Friends, all science rests upon that fundamental assumption.
So there is Adam naming the animals.
He is science...philosophy...
Finally, Adam walking in easy friendship with God,
that beautiful allusion in the book of Genesis that in the cool of the evening Adam walks with God
For desert people, that´s the best time of the the day, the cool evening, walking in easy friendship.
You know what that makes Adam, according to the Church Fathers?
That makes Adam a priest.
What does a priest do?
A priest leads worship. What´s worship? Adoration.
Pope Benedict gave us this beautiful etymology a couple of years ago.
AD ORATIO
AD ORA
It means, "to the mouth of."
To adore is to be mouth to mouth with God.
Breathing in the Divine Life and then breathing that Life back, in this great rhythm of Grace.
That's what we do every time we worship.
Every time we adore, we rediscover Eden.
We rediscover friendship with God.
OK
Act I, Creation,
with all these overtones and undertones.
We must always begin our preaching, our teaching, our presentation of the Faith with this First Act.
You never begin with sin.
You begin with sin, the whole conversation becomes skewed and negative and puritancal.
You always begin with Grace.