Cathal BarryCathal Barry takes a look at the Church’s teaching on creation
The Church teaches that God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine "work", concluded by the "rest" of the seventh day. On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to recognise the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.
Nothing, according to the Church, exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. It teaches that the world began when God's word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun.
Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection. For each one of the works of the "six days" it is said: "and God saw that it was good”. Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God's infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must, therefore, respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment.
The Catechism states that God “wills the interdependence of creatures”. The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tells us that no creature is self-sufficient, the Church reasons. “Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other.”
Regarding the beauty of the universe, the Church teaches that the order and harmony of the created world results from the diversity of beings and from the relationships which exist among them. “Man discovers them progressively as the laws of nature,” the catechism states. “They call forth the admiration of scholars. The beauty of creation reflects the infinite beauty of the Creator and ought to inspire the respect and submission of man's intellect and will.”
The hierarchy of creatures is expressed by the order of the "six days", from the less perfect to the more perfect. The Church teaches that God loves all his creaturesand takes care of each one. Nevertheless, man is the pinnacle of the Creator's work.
Regarding the sabbath – the end of the work of the six days. The sacred text says that "on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done", that the "heavens and the earth were finished", and that God "rested" on this day and sanctified and blessed it.
Creation was fashioned with a view to the sabbath and therefore for the worship and adoration of God. To keep the commandments, according to the Church, is “to correspond to the wisdom and the will of God as expressed in his work of creation”.