Preface: How difficult is it for us to comprehend God? Should we even try to write anything down about Him and share our thoughts about Him with others? Do we dare even to write anything down, which could be incorrect? Will God forgive us if some of us pretend to know some of how Creation occurred? Can we actually trace a continuous path which starts from the beginning to where we are today? Is it even worthwhile to try? After all, we are limited creatures, who have a very limited and blurry view of what might have happened in the past. How dare we be so presumptuous as to imagine that our understanding might be useful for such things?

Many, many thousands of years ago, some people did try to do this very thing. With prayer and discernment they attempted, to the best of their knowledge, to account for the Universe around them. Since then, we have found a few more things about the Universe, and we can hope that God will not be too offended if we try to put some of these observations down in writing and portray a slightly more modern view with the hope that maybe a few more people who have gone astray might be brought back to at least consider from whence they came, how much God loves them, and what they must do in the future.

It is with some fear and trepidation that we set forth a modern view of Creation.

In The Beginning…

(a story of Creation and Salvation)

In the beginning, there was only God. No black holes, forces, no ‘Singularity’. Not even space or dimensions existed, nor time. Just God. One God. And God encompassed and permeated everything. God had no needs nor wants because he was everything there was.

(All this is unthinkable, really. We can’t begin to imagine…)

But there was the ‘potential’ for things to exist because God thought and loved.

And because he was God, he had the Free Will. God could do anything he wanted to do (please forgive me for using the male pronoun.) Because God loved, we understand that there were others. We can understand this because Love always has another as its object.

The Revelation that has come down to us through the ages is that he is in fact three persons. We can think of these three persons as the Father; who gives existence; the Son, who is Wisdom and the Word; and the Spirit who is the motivator’ (John Paul II). These three persons of the ‘Trinity’ all exist together in mutual love and perfect harmony. Perhaps we can think of God as being so huge that we can only comprehend part of the mystery at a time in human terms.

God’s love is so great that he wanted to share it with others separate from themselves. So it was that God created beings to share it with. True love wants to be shared with These beings have free wills of their own and certainly include the Angels and people.

This sharing of love with other created beings included a risk. . The ‘test’ of true love is ‘free will’ which cannot be forced. For instance, a pet shows they have love for their owner when they are released and still return even when they could run away.

The overall order of Creation is unknown. Possibly the Angels were created first, then the physical Universe with all of its forces, matter, energy, dimensions and time. But this could have been different. People were created as part of the physical Universe. People are unique in that they are physical beings endowed with free will, but they have a spiritual soul, which lives forever. Thus people have the remarkable ability to translate spiritual forces into physical reality.

At any rate, Creation seems to have been flawed for some reason, because some of the Angels chose not to love completely and thus broke the chain of love and unity which had pervaded the Universe. This is consistent with the idea of free will but not with that of love. But God insists on free will and thus it was possible to disrupt the natural order which God had created. This disruption of God’s order, or sin, extended to all creatures, probably beginning with Angels and even resulted in death, since it is necessary to have love to maintain the natural order for life to exist.

Thus the entire creation can be understood in terms of love and free will (which is still the result of love).

The angel was Lucifer, or Satan, who first chose to use his free gift against God’s order. In the course of time, people were created and were exposed to this choice. People were led away from God’s perfect order by Satan and their own weakness in the garden of Eden. Since Adam was the original ancestor of all people, we inherited a human nature weakened by sin. The results of this ‘original’ sin were sickness, killing and death. Again, this is result of having Free Will, which allows one to disobey God and even destroy parts of his kingdom. This is not according to love or God’s plan.

But this is the price God was willing to pay for having a being who truly loves Him.

This disobedience of Adam caused God much hurt and pain. Again, though, because of his continuing great love for people, God decided to save at least some of them by making it possible for them to have a ‘Second’ chance.

The path God arranged for humans to follow to Heaven was one involving suffering similar to that which He would suffer in Jesus. But reparation for sins against an eternal God could not be made by people. “There is no reparation for sin without the shedding of innocent Blood” In the Old Testament, this blood was the imperfect blood of animals, which did not completely atone for sins. Still, it was a start, one which would eventual lead to the complete reparation when Christ shed his own blood.

Out of superstrong infinite love, God shed his own blood that we might be purified and made acceptable to a holy & perfect God.

Thus, God came to Earth in the person of Jesus, who taught us how God wanted us to live. He also told that suffering would be the route to eternal life and holiness. To those who follow Jesus closely,, God agreed to lift us into the company of the Trinity itself by letting us share in the divine nature.

But this second chance was obtained at a high price, both for us and for God. In the case of Jesus, he allowed himself to be killed by people. We, in turn were told that our suffering was the mystical way to eternal life by melding our suffering with Christ’s. That is, our suffering makes us partners with Christ on that seems incredible that God would take us in a brothers and sisters into the divine Trinity itself, but this shows the seriousness of our sin. God had to become sinful himself! But he was willing to do this because of his great love for all of mankind.

We do not really understand how this will lead us into eternity and the glory of the Trinity. But it is the only way for us. Otherwise, we are lost and condemned to separation from God, the real source of all life, peace and joy. If we don’t have God, our life is a dead end with nothing new and no rest.

To help us come to this amazing realization, Jesus established the Church and gave us his Holy Spirit to help us. All the scriptures, Sacraments and teachings of the Church were established by God to open our minds to God’s offer of eternal life in Jesus.

Our whole life, then, is a preparation for the moment of death. Thus, it critical for us to follow Jesus as closely as possible. Again, our free will still must make a choice.