I’ve always loved the drama of Holy Week.
The hollow triumph and fleeting glory of Palm Sunday, that passes from earthly and impermanent celebration into passion and betrayal and loss. The uncomfortable weight and rising tension that builds through Monday to Wednesday. The almost painful intimacy of Maundy Thursday, as the New Covenant supersedes the Old and the great sacrifice commences. The dreadful grief and highest sorrow of Good Friday. And then, of course, the stillness and deathly rest of Holy Saturday, that in turn (as the sun sets and the world is cast anew into shadow) sees light burn in the darkness, and joy and eucatastrophe stream forth, to be celebrated through the eve and into the relief of Easter Sunday.
Indeed, in my secret double life away from blogging as a moderately successful church organist, I do not think that there is any single moment that brings me greater joy in my profession than the fierce triumph of the organ’s fanfare during the Easter Vigil Mass, as the bells sound and light returns and the Gloria is sounded forth once more. Of all the many privileges in my profession, to be afforded the honour to try and announce a fraction of the glory of Christ’s triumph over Death to the congregation is surely the highest, and certainly the one that most readily moves me.
In any case, with this year’s Holy Week upon us, it is perhaps unsurprising that I am somewhat preoccupied with the Paschal Triduum — but this year in particular, I’ve found myself (somewhat anticipatorily) considering one very specific part of the observance. Namely, the first reading of the Catholic Easter Vigil Mass.
For those who are unfamiliar, the Easter Vigil Mass begins uniquely in darkness, and outside the church. There, the priest blesses the Easter fire, and proceeds to light the Paschal candle and enter the darkened church with it aflame. After this, and the proclamation of the Exsultet, the Mass proceeds in a more “standard” fashion, though with one easily observable distinction: rather than the standard two or three readings from the Bible, the Easter Vigil features seven.
Many of these readings follow a clear pattern, being concerned with covenant, with mercy, and with deliverance. But, curiously, the first reading seems to have little to do with any of these (other than being, I suppose, the establishment of the very first covenant between God and mankind). The first reading is, well, Genesis 1:1.
1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved over the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. 5 And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night. And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night. And there was evening and morning – the first day.
The creation of the world and all in it. You know…one of the best-known Biblical passages, familiar (if only on a surface level) to billions of people.
It is with this particular reading that we begin to prepare ourselves for the discovery of the empty tomb in the Gospel, and that, I suppose, is in itself significant. There is an implication (at least to me) of the Resurrection’s preparation, of its certainty, even from the very creation of the world. But even then, there has always been something intriguing to my mind as regards the reading’s inclusion in the Vigil liturgy, due perhaps in part to its familiarity, and perhaps in part due to its incongruity. It is not, as already mentioned, overly concerned with covenant or deliverance. And it is not read in anticipation of original sin, for the next reading set is the story of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac.
In short, I’ve never quite understood what place Genesis 1 has in the Easter liturgy – and arguably I still don’t. But, thanks to an excellent conversation with a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, the reading has been playing on my mind rather more than usual this year – and I think, at long last, I’ve come to a personal (if not necessarily an accurate) understanding of it and its Paschal significance.
For in addition to its prominent place in the gathered texts of the Old Testament, and its generally being well-known, the opening of the Book of Genesis has (perhaps rather unfortunately) become a distinctive battleground for Christians in more recent times, regarding the ‘truth’ or otherwise of its account (that is in turn representative of wider schools of thought regarding Biblical interpretation). I do not feel adequate in litigating these arguments and beliefs myself – suffice it to say, there is the utterly literal reading (God made the world and all in it in six full days, and rested on the seventh), the utterly symbolic (the world formed itself over millions of years via complex physical processes, and the Genesis account is a people’s attempt to frame this through a symbolic and theological lens) and many possible ‘in-between’ understandings.
As for me myself, I can safely say that I err toward the scientific and symbolic interpretation (my (theologically-grounded!) love for dinosaurs is likely evidence of this!), but I think it would be erroneous to say that this is because I believe in the scientific explanations of the world’s origins…because frankly, I do not think that I do. Rather, I believe the scientists and experts who have proposed these explanations – I frankly do not understand the smallest part regarding the exact physical mechanisms that assembled the world, and the solar system about it, according to their calculations (though I find those mechanisms interesting, and enjoy trying to better understand them). I cannot believe the explanations themselves, though I can trust in them, because I am a spectacularly poor scientist…as are most people. I simply do not understand enough to truly sufficiently prove or disprove them by my own merits.
However, through the particular discussion that sparked this present blog post, and its concern with Biblical interpretation, meaning, and belief, I came to understand something rather strange. Because, in talking about questions of Biblical literalism and understanding, I realised that it actually does not matter to me whether the Earth was created six thousand or six billion years ago.1
What matters to me is that it was created.
Truly, it makes no difference to me what the mechanism for that creation was. Maybe it actually did happen over the span of a week, exactly as the Bible says. Maybe it was the result of unimaginable astronomical, physical, and eventually geological processes that slowly burned for millions of years. Maybe it’s something else altogether. It truly does not matter to me. Indeed, given how bad I am at theology, science, and understanding the ‘correct’ way of reading ancient Hebraic texts, I would not and should not assert to defend any given theorem with great confidence.
What is important to me is the fact of creation, not the method of it. It does not matter how the world was created, it matters that it was. For the sake of my faith, the former is meaningless, and the latter crucial.
Hence, such trivialities as evolution and the formation of a solar system feel unlikely to ever challenge my faith. My faith isn’t in the Bible itself (though it can be and is informed by it), but in creation. There frankly isn’t a single scientific process that could ever challenge that, either, which may fairly seem like bad science to some. But on the other hand, I’m not sure that it is the place of scientific inquiry to incontrovertibly banish the Christian God forever to the realm of human fancy in the first place.
As to what that means, to ‘believe in creation,’ that deserves a little consideration, I suppose. The long and short of it, though, is that to me, the Christian vision of a creative God is uniquely awe-inspiring and yet sensible; not least because it accords with my own experience. To be created in the image of a Creator leads one inevitably to creativity, I think – and to love the act of creation. It is perhaps bad theology, just as I was practicing bad science earlier, but at least for me personally, it feels ‘sufficient.’
All of this is likely unsurprising, given my own clear fascination with creation and mythopoeia. Yet the realisation of it still felt surprising in the moment, and that is, I suppose, why I’m now trying to organise and conceptualise it.
There is very little in Catholic liturgical formulation that occurs by accident, but I cannot say for sure that its setting of Genesis 1:1 as the opening Easter reading is intended to help us reflect upon our creative nature, and to lead us to turn anew to the Creator of that creation. But though I cannot say that this is the case, I do wonder if it might be so, and not least because there is another Biblical creationistic reading that is also set as a reading on a prominent feast day – namely, the opening of the Gospel of John.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and nothing that was made was made without Him. 4 Life was in Him, and Life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Again, for those who are unaware, the opening verses of John are set as the Gospel Reading for Christmas Day in the Catholic liturgy, each and every year. Nothing about shepherds, or angels, or mangers. Rather, the deeply moving and poetic verses are concerned with the Incarnation of the Word, through which all things were made.
I have for many years had a devotion to St John the Evangelist, even going so far as to choose him as my confirmation saint. Amusingly, I was unaware of Tolkien’s own love for the saint until many years later. But I think, perhaps, that there is something uniquely compelling in John’s evangelical vision that speaks directly to that love of and love for creation. For my own part, I can securely say that my love for him began when I first read those opening verses of his Gospel for myself
In iconography and portrayal, St John is usually encountered as ‘the faithful disciple,’ present at the Crucifixion, or ‘the disciple who Jesus loved.’ But it was never those facets of him that interested me (though arguably they should). Rather, it’s John’s own fascinating relationship with revelation and creation, his understanding of a whole Truth glimpsed through a fractured light, that compels me in his writing.
Even given the clearly creationistic themes in these chapters from Genesis and John, it is difficult for me to argue that there is significance or meaning to their mutual prominent placement in the Catholic liturgical year to open the Easter Vigil and reveal Christmas Day, respectively. Yet it seems (to me) that there is an intriguing rapport between the two, that they inform and enrich each other and the respective feast days on which they are read for the congregation. Further, that shared emphasis on creation feels significant to me, feels as if both readings are selected in order to emphasise God’s creation and His love for that creation – a love that we, as beings made in His image, cannot help but share.
Perhaps this is all rather personal and silly and a slightly selfish way of looking at the whole thing, I cannot say for sure. But that realisation, that it is the creation that is important and not the manner of creating, felt significant enough to me personally to write a selfish post about it. And maybe, just maybe, it will at least help me better understand my own faith.
For many years, the reading of Genesis 1 during the Easter Vigil has perplexed me, but this year, I’m eagerly looking forward to it. I’m excited to consider it not as a laundry list of things in the world, nor to gloss over it as allegory or speculation, but to try and understand it for what it is: a view through a splinter of light of the Creator creating, with all that that entails then following – including His making of us in His creative image, and His love for that creation being so great as to suffer and die for the sake of its absolution.
Because, ultimately, I neither believe nor disbelieve the Genesis account as it is literally set. I simply believe in Creation, and in the Creator who formed it: the one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible…
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- Yes, I know that current scientific estimates date the Earth as being approximately 4.5 billion years old. Let me have my rhetorical device, damnit. ↩︎