Holy Saturday
“Then God said, ‘Let the
earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind,
and trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And so
it was.” (Genesis 1:11) “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of
God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:28)
“then the LORD God
formed a man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a
garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed”
(Genesis 2:7-8) “And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made
into a woman and brought her to the man.” (Genesis 2: 22)
These scriptures give a
glance into the two different creation stories that emerge from Genesis. In the
first, God creates the world and all that is in it and then proceeds to make
man and woman. In the second, God first makes Adam and then creates all the
beasts of the field and the birds of the air and, seeing that Adam is lonely,
creates Eve. I think many times when people read these two separate accounts of
creation, they get confused, and either choose to believe one or neither of
them. Especially for people new to Christianity, finding two contradictions
within the first two chapters can be disheartening. Often we forget that the
world was a very different place tens of thousands of years ago when the first
stories in the Bible were first being passed down. There was no written
communication everything was by word of mouth. Each village or tribe of people
would have story tellers who recounted the stories of how things came from
memory. These story tellers learned from the story tellers before them and
before them and so on. The repetition in the first creation story “Then God
created… and He saw that it was good.” Is proof of this and gives insight into
the use of repetitive language to help remember. There is really no way of
knowing how the world was created and which, if either, of the two stories is
the right one. But really is it a matter of how
we got here or that we are here?
Should we be putting so much focus on the how of our creation or the now of
God’s presence with us? On this very Holy Saturday of the Easter season, I
think it is easy for us to get caught up in remembering the Passion of our Lord
and waiting in anticipation and hope for him to rise again on Easter Sunday.
There is nothing wrong with this as remembering and celebrating is what the
Easter season is about and is the concept around which Christianity was formed,
but what else can we do to respond to the Jesus that is here, now, right in
front of us? As a college student, the first thing that comes to mind is
inviting others who may not attend church to go to the Easter vigil mass. Even
the smallest things can invite Jesus to be a part of our lives here and now.
Whatever it is, however insignificant you might think it to be, try it!
Remember, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.”
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Jonathan Meinhardt majors in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering..
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