In the Beginning came Order

This week we begin our trip into the book of Genesis. It is so foundational of a book that it takes us from the beginning of the world to the Jewish people heading down to Egypt. From the fall of mankind to the genesis of the exodus.  The book is named after the first few words of the text “In the beginning “. My thought reading through this at this particular moment in time is what does this mean. We can look at this developing picture as a history or what was. This is a valid and hopefully helpful view of the book.

The beginning

We also can reflect upon the mystery in which these three words contain. It declares there was a beginning and it infers that there is also an end. What does this mean as we look within our Catholic Christian teachings. We can look at how would someone from the Jewish tradition hear this Through the eyes of someone not thinking Jesus is the Messiah, but yet their entire culture and upbringing has Jesus as the most dominant person affecting just about everything. Christians are challenged to look at the world through Jewish eyes, as the words were created by someone with a Jewish faith with God helping them along.

Perhaps one of the first Jewish intonations occur as God completed his work for the day.  Evening came and morning followed the first day… the second day etc.  The ancient Jewish thought that the day began at evening.  We tend to think of the beginning of the day in the morning or if more scientifically minded at midnight.  But the day in the mind of the ancient Jewish and to this day is that the day begins at evening.  This is why you will see the Sabbath begin at evening and end at the next evening at sunset

Jewish days

Now of course when the day starts and end does not really matter as much as the term day in the first place. There are all sorts of similes in the Bible about what God’s day is like. Peter uses 1000 years to describe one of God’s days… same in the Psalms and numerous other places.  But this nomenclature is used not to actually measure one of Gods days… but to emphasize patience on the human side.  We of course want everything fixed, cured etc. immediately.

In 2 Peter’s case it was stating that god’s patience with us transforming our lives and repenting to allow our lives to be continued in Heaven.  God waits patiently.  In Psalm 90’s case the question again is humanities lack of patience.  When will God do something…  Again the 1000-year motif is there to calm the requester. God does not do the will of the creature… but the other way around.   The questions that God gave to Tobit are calling for us to follow.  “were you around when I made….”

the Word Day

The point I am making here is that we should not in any way get hung up on the word ‘day’. The ancient people would not be able to grasp the time periods we believe today are involved. And to be quite honest the time periods mean absolutely nothing from a historical aspect. The point is not that it took six 24 hour periods to make the Universe. The point is that God so loved the world he created it out of nothing, organizing the chaos into order. Out of this order would come you and me and all else we know and cherish.

Peace and joy

As we read through the first part of Genesis there is hope and there is true reality of peace and joy.  We see mankind made in God’s image and likeness.  Unfortunately, this joy will be lost until our Savior comes. But, at this point humanity was started with 1 man and 1 woman. We have come to a point in our science where it can be proven scientifically that we all came from a single source of 1 man and one woman. But again we can get caught up in the weeds here. The important thing is not that we are… but that we are creatures created by God.

In our day and age it is very easy to lose our way and forget about God. The book of Genesis brings us face to face with the reality that order was made of chaos and the pinnacle of this order was mankind. But with that came responsibility. Perhaps that is what we should focus on most… what is our responsibility first to God but then our responsibility to our brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Our readings this week can be found at the USCCB site. The beginning of Genesis begins on Monday February 6th and continues Other writings I have made on Genesis in the past can be found Genesis Chapter 1 and throughout the website blog page