Monday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss,
while a mighty wind swept over the waters.


Approaching the first chapter of Genesis, I trust my readers don’t need a lengthy explanation of the difference between science and religion. That quarrel has gone on long enough. Sides have been chosen and they won’t change in the foreseeable future. Indeed serious scientists and theologians have long ago abandoned their claims to infallibility. It was nothing but useless baggage. They have already left the building as creationists quarrel among themselves as to whether seven days means 168 hours or seven millennia.
Genesis opens with a marvelous impression of silence, darkness and formless waste. There is nothing in this for the senses to grasp. No sight; no sound; no touch. An abyss of emptiness waits for it-knows-not-what. Periodically our own lives fall into that emptiness. We have followed the Lord as best we can but now find ourselves, as Pope John Paul II urged us, “setting out for the deep.” And we wonder will God be there.
But it’s not only our personal lives that explore this dark chaos; entire nations move falteringly into the future. Lately we have watched Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen thrown into the deep. We fear for them and for ourselves as we watch from afar. 

• Will they settle for a radical version of Islam that, like the Communism of the last century, is doomed to endless and barren revolution? 
• Will they permit western interests to co-opt their sovereignty? 
• Will they reinvent another tiresome dictatorship? 
• Or will they allow something organic to develop from within their own Islamic cultures in their own time and place, as democracy developed from the Christian traditions of  the United States?

Into formlessness God speaks a word of command, “Let there be light.” Of all the creation myths of antiquity only the Jewish story eschews violence. God speaks and so it happens. God’s authority and God’s word are sources of endless joy for His people. There is civility and order, there is justice and peace. No one has too much; no one goes hungry. As the Italian poet Dante said, "In his will is our peace." 


God saw how good the light was. Grace upon grace, from goodness to goodness, God creates. As Saint Francis said, “You are good, all good, supreme good.” Could anything but good come from God? 

In magnificent procession the dome of the sky follows light; earth and sea appear beneath the dome; vegetation springs out of the earth; luminaries appear high in the dome, creating day and night; and so forth. Each in its time, each in its place.

The cosmic vision of Genesis assures the faithful who have eyes to see that God has everything well in hand for those who believe in Him. There is no need for violence, threats or rudeness. There is ample time for all things to be accomplished, organically, peacefully, each in its time and place.