This weekend, as we celebrate the First Sunday of Advent, we begin the new liturgical year 2025. Pope Francis has called for this year to be a Year of Jubilee, commemorating the 2025th anniversary of the Incarnation, God dwelling with us in the Person of Jesus Christ, fully the eternal Son of God and fully human. Bishop Gruss has asked us to prepare for this Jubilee Year with a proclamation of the essential movements of our Christian vision of reality. Therefore, I will write this weekend about the first movement of God’s great symphony of salvation, Creation. 

I would like to invite you to stop reading at this point and read the first two chapters of the first book in the Bible, Genesis. 

Now that you have read these two chapters, you may notice a few things. The first thing to note is that we actually have two ancient accounts of creation using figurative language (1:1-2:3 & 2:4-25). These were written by two different inspired scribes, which we notice use two different manners of referring to the Creator (the first account’s Creator is “God” and the second account’s Creator is “Lord God”). These two accounts highlight different aspects of Creation, but they profoundly complement each other. There are so many lessons to be learned in these two chapters, but I will focus on three questions, Who creates? What was created? Why was anything created? 

Who creates? What makes the Biblical creation accounts unique is that there is only one God who is Creator of everything that exists (except God). In all other ancient creation myths, the world was shaped by multiple gods out of pre-existing matter, usually through some kind of battle or warfare. In Genesis, there is only one God, who creates not through violence, but through language. God even dialogues with his creatures, human beings created in God’s image and likeness. God is not another “thing” among the things of creation, but God is the source, sustainer, and ground of all created existence. 

What was created? In the creation account found in the first chapter of Genesis, God creates everything that exists out of nothing, and God declares that everything created is good. God is all Good, and everything God creates is good. In other words, all creation is a good gift from God. This is the fundamental starting point for the biblical vision of reality. In his book The Gift: Creation, Catholic philosopher Kenneth Schmitz wrote of how human beings either fundamentally see everything as gift (Latin=donum) or we see everything as fundamentally raw material (Latin=datum). If everything is a good gift from God, then we are called to receive everything with gratitude, care for and steward creation to fruitful abundance, and share everything with each other as freely as we received it. If everything is just “stuff” or raw material, then our job is to go out and get as much of it as we can, consume it or use it up, and store (hoard) what we haven’t consumed yet because there may not be enough for tomorrow or for everyone. In this paradigm, there is no need for gratitude or thankfulness. After all, “I earned it!” This worldview seems closer to the violent vision of those who have never heard God’s Word. 

Why was anything created? Was God lacking or lonely so that he needed to create? If this is true, then God is not perfect and is not fundamentally different than the self-serving gods of the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, etc. God creates because God is unselfish Love (1 John 4:7). The love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is so good and so abundant that it overflowed into the goodness and abundance of creation. As the poet Dante wrote in The Divine Comedy, it is God’s love “which moves the sun and other stars.” This is the meaning of humans being created in the “image of God.” We have been given intelligence and freedom so that we can accept and give the gift of Love. Pope St. John Paul II once stated that the deepest meaning of our humanity is Gift: that we can consciously receive ourselves (every human person, body and spirit) as beloved and good gifts from God, and we are called to give ourselves away as gifts of love. We are created out of love by God to be loved by God and neighbor and to love God and neighbor in return. It’s all about relationship and communion. It’s all about Love. This is our origin and our destiny. Another name for this state of existence is Heaven.

John