Monday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
(Genesis 1:1-19; Mark 5:53-56)
Theologian Scott Hahn finds God as humans’ benefactor in the story of creation. Hahn notes that on each of the first three days God creates an essential element of life and sustenance. On the first day God creates time with the separation of day and night. As Einstein observed, time is indispensable so that everything would not happen at once. On the second day God creates space with the separation of the waters above from the waters below. And on the third day God creates life and sustenance with vegetation.
The second three days are filled with no less ambitious activity. Corresponding to the creation of time, God makes the sun and other stars as governors of day and night. On the fifth day He will make the birds of the air as rulers of the space he created on the second day and, as well, the fish to inhabit the waters below. On the sixth day the Lord will produce land animals and, finally, humans who will not only be sovereigns of the land but the prime beneficiaries of all God’s efforts.
The Church understands creation as by no means necessary, but rather God’s gratuitous gift. It springs from the love of the Trinity that flows over to bless everything else with temporal existence and humans with, eventually, the grace of eternal life.
