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The World Is a Product of Creative Reason
- The Catholic University of America Press
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65 creation & nature ant for a healthy training in sports and an education in respect for the environment. This is not, therefore, a duty to carry out on one’s own, but rather in agreement with families—especially when your students are minors—and in collaboration with school and other educational institutions. Your example as lay faithful is also important in the context of sports, which can give the right centrality to moments fundamental to the life of faith and, especially, to the sanctification of Sunday as the Lord’s Day. The World Is a Product of Creative Reason From Easter Vigil Homily, April 23, 2011 The liturgical celebration of the Easter Vigil makes use of two eloquent signs. First there is the fire that becomes light. As the procession makes its way through the church, shrouded in the darkness of the night, the light of the paschal candle becomes a wave of lights, and it speaks to us of Christ as the true morning star that never sets—the Risen Lord in whom light has conquered darkness. The second sign is water. On the one hand, it recalls the waters of the Red Sea, decline and death, the mystery of the Cross. But now it is presented to us as spring water , a life-giving element amid the dryness. Thus it becomes the image of the sacrament of Baptism, through which we become sharers in the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet these great signs of creation, light and water, are not the only constituent elements of the liturgy of the Easter Vigil. An- 66 creation & nature other essential feature is the ample encounter with the words of sacred scripture that it provides. Before the liturgical reform there were twelve Old Testament readings and two from the New Testament. The New Testament readings have been retained . The number of Old Testament readings has been fixed at seven, but depending upon the local situation, they may be reduced to three. The Church wishes to offer us a panoramic view of the whole trajectory of salvation history, starting with creation, passing through the election and the liberation of Israel to the testimony of the prophets by which this entire history is directed ever more clearly toward Jesus Christ. In the liturgical tradition all these readings were called prophecies. Even when they are not directly foretelling future events, they have a prophetic character, they show us the inner foundation and orientation of history. They cause creation and history to become transparent to what is essential. In this way they take us by the hand and lead us toward Christ, they show us the true Light. At the Easter Vigil, the journey along the paths of sacred scripture begins with the account of creation. This is the liturgy ’s way of telling us that the creation story is itself a prophecy . It is not information about the external processes by which the cosmos and man himself came into being. The Fathers of the Church were well aware of this. They did not interpret the story as an account of the process of the origins of things, but rather as a pointer toward the essential, toward the true beginning and end of our being. Now, one might ask: is it really important to speak also of creation during the Easter Vigil? Could we not begin with the events in which God calls man, forms a people for himself, and creates his history with men upon the [3.88.185.100] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:43 GMT) 67 creation & nature earth? The answer has to be: no. To omit the creation would be to misunderstand the very history of God with men, to diminish it, to lose sight of its true order of greatness. The sweep of history established by God reaches back to the origins, back to creation. Our profession of faith begins with the words: “We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” If we omit the beginning of the Credo, the whole history of salvation becomes too limited and too small. The Church is not some kind of association that concerns itself with man’s religious needs but is limited to that objective. No, she brings man into contact with God and thus with the source of all things. Therefore we relate to God as Creator, and so we have a responsibility for creation. Our responsibility extends as far as creation because it comes from...