We build on the Creed and the faith it professes when we consider creation.  We must consider everything around us including the mathematics in the grand design.  There are some who will argue that creation itself is self-evolving and that there is no need for the hand of God.  There are several different concepts surrounding Creation theory.  All of them fall short based on the indisputable evidence we find in the Bible.  It is easy to see God’s hand in nature and to confirm it through Sacred Scripture.  “Nothing is more apt to confirm our faith and hope than holding it fixed in our minds that nothing is impossible with God” (CCC, 274).  The Catechism explains these misguided beliefs of Pantheism, Dualism, Manichaeism, Gnosticism and Deism and offers the truth that the inquiry of the origins of Creation are “distinctively human” (CCC, 285).  It further explains that the “existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason, even if this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error” (CCC, 286).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church provides the best, defined terms for the Almighty, whom “we believe that his might is universal, for God who created everything also rules everything and can do everything” (CCC, 268).  Throughout the Bible, we can see the power of God professed in all of its glory.

Psalms are often songs of lament.  They are from a people who have had hardship and felt abandoned by God.  They don’t understand why they are encountering the hardships since God adopted them as his Chosen People.  It’s often hard for us to see the hand of God in today’s world.  We experience many of the same laments as the ancient Israelites.  We ask the question “why” frequently.  We want to know why a loving God would allow so much evil or destruction.  We cannot forget that God gave us free will and with free will comes responsibility.  God has proven his love for us through the sacrifice and humiliation of his Son.  “God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil.  Christ crucified is thus the ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God’.’ (CCC, 272).  It is through the Resurrection that God has freed us from Original sin and offers us the opportunity to reconcile our sins and feel his great love for us.

Genesis explains the creation story through the acts of God, the Creator.  Our Creeds (Nicene and Apostles’) individually profess that “God is the Father almighty and Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen”.  “From the beginning, God envisaged the glory of the new creation in Christ (CCC, 280).  Since Christ is the Word and we know from Genesis that the Word was with God before creation, we can understand the great wisdom of our Creator God who spoke and creation occurred.  His Breath, the Holy Spirit was breathed into His Creation and it was brought to life through the love of God, the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, which we refer to as the Triune God or Trinity.

Looking back through the stories of the Old Testament, we can clearly see that God openly shared the truth of creation with the Israelites because he felt it was important in the development of His people.  He provided the resources through the patriarchs, allowing the Israelite people to free themselves from enslavement.  The Israelites saw the works of God in action and this provided them with the nudge they needed to establish faith.  “Thus, the revelation of creation is inseparable from the revelation and forging of the covenant of the one God with his People (CCC, 287).

The authors of Genesis placed the Genesis story in the “beginning of Scripture to express their solemn language the truths of creation – its origin and its end in God” (CCC, 289).  Understanding our beginning and the miracle of creation allows us to put perspective within the scope of life itself.  With any beginning, there is an end.  Suffice it to say, from the moment of our creation we are destined to end.  But we learn that the ending to this life is only the welcoming from God into his greater Creation.  We are offered salvation because of God’s great love for his People.  We must remember that as Christians, we have our roots in Judaism.  Through God’s gift of love for his Chosen People, we too inherit the title of God’s Chosen.  God’s own sacrifice was designed to usher us into His embrace and majesty.

“The world was made for the glory of God” (CCC, 293).  This might seem a bit self-indulgent, but we must sit back and put this into perspective and terms that we might understand in our own lives.  We too, create.  Why do we create anything?  It would be extremely presumptuous of us to think that we could ever fully comprehend why God does what God does, but we can establish why we create and extrapolate in our own limited way how this might help us better understand the purpose for God’s Creation.  “St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things ‘not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and communicate it,’ for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness” (CCC, 293).  We create for the same reasons.  Creating brings us a level of satisfaction and love for our creation.  While this example can never do justice to God’s purpose for creation, we can begin to have a hint at God’s love for creating.  “The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created.  God made us ‘to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace” (CCC, 294).  Through God’s ongoing gift of creation, we are blessed with the ability to propagate and bring new life into the world.  We love our children with a love that can never be fully expressed.  We will sacrifice for our children in ways that cannot be fathomed.  We lavish in the unconditional love of a child for a parent.  These examples can further help us to glimpse at the unconditional love of God and his own wish that we will love him as unconditionally as his child.  Similarly, when our children grow up and leave the nest, the relationship changes and that unconditional love, while still there, becomes distracted and less “front and center” as the adult child grows and finds new things to focus his or her love on.  This is a rudimentary example for how we self-separate ourselves from God and later begin to question our purpose.  We must remember that our purpose is to love God unconditionally and fully, like a child.  God created, so that he could love and be loved.  We are the fulfilment of that creation.

Works Cited 

USCCB. Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition. Washington, D.C. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013 Print.

Senior, Donald, et al.  Editors: The Catholic Study Bible, Second Edition New American Bible Revised Edition, New York: N.Y. Oxford Press, 2011 Print.