Talk 8

The time has come, brothers, for us to talk also about the creation of the visible world, at which we look every day and which, out of habit, we value so little. Yes, we have grown accustomed to everything even in God’s world, just as at home we are used to our household furnishings. And yet this world is a wondrous creation of God: everywhere in it are seen the infinite wisdom and the ever-present power of the Creator; everything in it is so beautiful, so majestic, and so beneficial for living creatures, that the holy Fathers, who found a special delight in contemplating it, could not find words enough to praise the wisdom, the goodness, and the omnipotence of the Creator—to describe the magnificence and beauty of the world. And indeed, brothers, from the contemplation of the world there is clearly visible to everyone—the learned and the unlearned alike—the omnipotence, the goodness, and the wisdom of God: «for by the greatness and beauty of created things their Maker is correspondingly known»108, says Holy Scripture.

But why do we need to know how, from where, and for what the world came to be? For this reason: that, having learned its origin—with all that is in it—from the all-good Creator, and the purpose with which He created it all, we may stand in awe before the Creator, know the worth of things, and with gratitude make use of all that we have and all that surrounds us; that, having learned what the whole visible world is, with all its appurtenances and with all its span of time—how transient it is—we may not attach ourselves too closely to this fleeting life and its goods, but may from the visible, changing, transient world ascend to the invisible, unchanging, and eternal Kingdom of Heaven, for which we are appointed to prepare here.

Let us begin, then, with God’s help, our talks about the creation of the world. You see, brothers, that everything in the world is in constant motion: each day of God the sun appears in the morning in the east, and in the evening in the west; the moon goes its own round; and both the sun and the moon are plainly, by turns, now beneath the earth, now above it, shining now on us, now on those who are beneath us; the stars too are seen at one time in one place, and at another in another. And these round, great bodies, at the beckoning of the Almighty Creator, move about in an orderly, measured, unchanging way. This movement of the great round spheres serves, brothers, as the basis for the measurement of time; and this same movement is, further, a sure proof that the world is not eternal, but at some point received a beginning. Thus, looking at the movement of a clock’s hand or at the turning of the wheels within a clock, everyone concludes that the clock was made and set going by a clockmaker. The same must be said when we look at the movement of the world—namely, that it received its beginning from the Creator, and together with its beginning received its motion. And when the world has a beginning, then it will surely have an end as well. It pleased the Almighty Creator that the movement of these great spheres, called planets (and our earth too is a sphere), should serve the life of the world. And so, brothers, the very movement of the heavenly luminaries and of our earth brings us to the thought of their beginning. Not always was everything as it is now; there was a time when there was nothing: neither heaven, nor earth, nor any visible creature. How then did everything come to be? The holy Prophet and Seer of God Moses revealed to us how everything came to be, and from where came all this multitude and variety of creatures. «In the beginning,» he says, «God created the heaven and the earth»109—and further he recounts how He created everything in heaven and on earth. And the Lord God Himself, through the lips of the Prophet Isaiah, says: «I made the earth and man upon it; I with My hand established the heaven; I gave command to all the stars»110. Let us listen, then, to the narrative of Moses. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And when—in the beginning? Then, that is, when it pleased His goodness to grant a beginning to the visible world. He created. This means He did not merely fashion it out of ready material, as, for instance, a sculptor, a mason, or a carpenter produce various fine and useful things out of ready material, but He created everything out of nothing, bringing it from complete non-being into being. Let us marvel, brothers, at our wondrous, almighty God, who made everything by His numberless power and brought everything from non-being into being through the multitude of His mercy111—and let us fall down before Him in the dust with a feeling of complete humility and surrender to His will.

He created the heaven and the earth. God first created the substance of the universe, and only then set about ordering it step by step. This substance was in the beginning undefined and without order: here everything was together—earth and water and air and fire; nothing was separated, nothing yet had those aspects and forms which we see now.

«And the earth was,» it says further, «invisible and unformed.» Invisible, because, as St. Basil the Great says, the earth was sunk in the deep, and because of the water spread over its surface it could not be seen; and it was called unformed because there was not yet upon it that ordering which was made in the following days112. Why, then, was the earth in the beginning shapeless and unformed—that is, why did the Creator not at once make it perfect? St. Chrysostom answers this thus: «The earth is the universal table, and homeland, and nurse, and mother; the universal city and the grave: our bodies are from it, our dwelling and habitation are upon it, and after death we return again into it. And so, lest the necessity of using the earth make you marvel at it beyond its worth, and lest the multitude of benefits from the earth carry you off into impiety, God shows it to you beforehand as shapeless and unarranged, so that you, seeing its imperfection, may marvel at Him who created it and placed within it all this power; that you may glorify Him who arranged so many things for our convenience113.» Further the holy Narrator continues: «and darkness was upon the deep»—that is, over the water which covered the whole earth was an impenetrable darkness, a gloom.

And the Spirit of God moved over the water. The Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, the third Person of the Holy Life-originating Trinity, moved over this deep and poured into it warmth and life, warming and quickening the watery nature. Thus the world is, as it were, born from water by the action of the Holy Spirit. Something similar happens also at our own birth, brothers. In the Mystery of Holy Baptism, which is a spiritual birth, we too are born of water and the Spirit, as the Savior says: «unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God»114.

It is not known whether the earth remained unformed for long or not, nor how long the gloom lay over the waters; only that the Lord God first of all created the nature of material light, so that through it He might do away with the disorder and confusion that had prevailed until then, and that the work of His hands might enjoy the beneficial action of light.

«And God said: let there be light: and there was light.» The Creator said that there should be light, and light came to be. So all-powerful is the Word of the Creator. Since the Lord God is infinite being, to bring everything from non-being into being is incomparably easier for Him than for us to make anything out of ready material; and indeed the world could not have come into being otherwise than out of non-being, out of nothing—because there was no other being except God; and if there had been, then God would not be God. And so light was created out of nothing by God’s command. A wondrous creation is this light! Without it a thing exists, yet it is as though it were not there, while light makes it manifest. So, before light came to be, the earth existed, yet it was as though it did not exist, because no eye would have seen it, even had there been one. And even now it often happens on a dark autumn night, in unlit places, that everything seems to vanish—the sky, and the earth, and the water, and the forests, and the houses, and every object—and we see not only no beauty of the world, but absolutely nothing. Not without reason is the world itself called by a word that means light. Truly it may be called light: what sort of world would it be without light? All the animals and even the plants themselves are so made that they cannot live without light; and besides, light gives everything such a fine, attractive appearance, whereas without light it is as if there were no world at all. Let us learn, then, brothers, to value this gift of God—light—and also this light of our eyes, sight, without which even in the light one can see nothing. But let us not be too attached to material light and to the sense of sight; there are people who will not believe anything they do not see: «if I do not see it,» they say, «I will not believe.» Look: the earth existed in the beginning, but it was invisible because of the darkness everywhere. So too we do not see the spiritual world, yet it exists. Light and eyes are given to us only for this visible world, not for that invisible one; for that world another eye is needed: the enlightened eyes of the heart115, or a pure heart: «blessed are the pure in heart, it is said, for they shall see God»116. And the human soul we do not see, yet in reality it exists. In a person it gives life and beauty to the body, and especially expression to the face; in him it is the chief cause of all that he does; but once the soul has departed the body, there remains only a shapeless corpse, dust of the earth.

Having created light, the Lord God Himself testified that light is a good thing. «And God saw the light, that it was good.» And indeed it is good. The whole world feels what a good thing light is. But besides material light there is also, brothers, a spiritual light. This light, and the source of light, is the Lord God, who dwells in unapproachable light117. The angels too are called second lights after God, as we said in the previous talk. We prize material light because we find it very necessary and useful for ourselves. But if we value sensible light, let us also come to know and value the light of the mind. That light, as you yourselves see, is inconstant: it appears and disappears, and serves almost only the body, which is itself inconstant and not eternal; but this other light is eternal, and God gave us to see the sensible light for this very reason—that He might make us worthy of the noetic light at the time He Himself has appointed118; and the blessedness and beauty of this noetic light are such that we cannot now comprehend them in their fullness: sins, passions, and the cares of daily life hinder us in this present life from vividly feeling this light in the soul; the garment of the body also hides it from the soul. The spiritual light was in the world too; but alas, people did not receive it: «Light came into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, for their deeds were evil»119. To be made worthy of becoming partakers of the spiritual light, we must clearly put off the works of darkness—that is, our sins.

«And God divided between the light and between the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness night.» Although God created light, He did not entirely destroy the darkness that had existed before the creation of light—because unbroken light would have been harmful to creatures—but only made a division between them, appointing an order and succession for the one and for the other. But how could there then be day and night, when there was as yet no sun? «Then,» says St. Basil the Great, «day came and night followed, not by the movement of the sun, but because the primordial light, in a measure appointed by God, now expanded and now again contracted120.»

«And there was evening, and there was morning, one day»—not merely the first, but the one, that is, the only day. It was so called in order to show its importance and preeminence above the other days: because it is the head of time, the beginning of days, contemporary with the light, as St. Basil the Great says121. For this time let us conclude our talk with the first day of creation: it is enough if we retain even this in memory. Let us remember that the whole world was created by God out of nothing, solely by His goodness, and, remembering this, let us stand in awe before Him and gratefully glorify Him. Amen.