Memorial of Saint Scholastica, Virgin

Lectionary: 329

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.
Then God said,
“Let there be light,” and there was light.
God saw how good the light was....

God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day

 W here Genesis supposed that God molded preexistent matter with form and purpose, later Jewish and Christian philosophies teach that God called being out of nothingness -- creatio ex nihilo -- and his creation remains as a bold, enduring challenge to emptiness, nothingness, ennui, cowardice, and nihilism. We humans then -- beings aware of our being -- must use the same godly courage to become fully human.

Neglecting that, we may lapse into nothingness. In the face of death and eternity, Greek mythology supposed that human souls, having crossed and drunk of the River Lethe, forget their former life on earth and survive eternally in vacuous, empty mindlessness. Homer's Greek hero Odysseus visited the soul of his former battle buddy, Achilles, and found him despondent. He said to him,

 

"For of old, in the days of thy life, we Argives gave you the same honor as the gods, and now thou art a great prince here among the dead. Let not thy death be any grief to thee, Achilles.”

Even so I spake, and he straightway answered me, and said: “Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death, oh great Odysseus. Rather would I live on ground as the hireling of another, with a landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead that be departed.

Doomed to eternal idleness, the greatest warrior of all literature despised Hell and would have preferred slavery among the living to royal authority in the underworld. 

But whether we speak of ancient Greek or current Catholic mythology, we suppose the afterlife reflects our current beliefs about life. Is it ultimately without purpose, or will we find the courage, as our Creator God does, to eternally defy mindless idleness with creative, meaningful action? Humans cannot be content with simply being and feeling, we must also do; that is, create as God creates. Where he calls being out of emptiness, we shape time and matter into meaning and purpose. 

Many Americans today, facing this very challenge, take their own life, or waste their lives with mindless entertainment, alcohol, and drugs. 

Being made in the image of God we must become his likeness as well. And that entails risk with the possibilities of frustration, failure, waste, loss, and betrayal; but we cannot not act. We must do something. It is better to love and lose than never to love at all. 

After six days of creation, God looks upon all he has made and concludes that it is very good. Even human creatures are very good. And beautiful, we might add. For whatever God finds good must also be true and beautiful. 

Believers and lovers of God, we too create meaning and purpose; and find our lives have become, by the grace of God, very good.