The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 43: Creation Is Good (2024)

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

How does God create? We read today about the reality that God creates an ordered and good world. Moreover, he is continually present in his creation, upholding and sustaining it. We also learn that God grants human beings the dignity of being causes, giving us the incredible power to share in his Divine Providence freely. Finally, Fr. Mike reminds us that because we can participate in God’s plan, our suffering is not meaningless. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 299-308. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension in 365 days. We'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. It is day 43. We're reading paragraphs 299-308.

You guys, before we get started, I am using the Ascension Edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach. You can follow along, of course, with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Also, you can follow along with our Catechism in a year reading plan if you go to ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app to receive daily updates, daily notifications, and reminders that, hey guys, today's day 43, we're reading paragraphs 299 to 308. I know I've said this for the last number of days, but it gets better and better.

Our story. So here's what we're going to start with. Paragraph 299. We're going to hear that God creates an ordered and a good world. And this is so important that God creates an ordered world. Why? Because God Himself is reason, right? God is reason itself. And so it's not chaotic. It's not, it has an order to it. I guess lack of a better term. It's ordered and it's good. And this is very, very important. One of the articles of the Gospel story is that God is good. We've established that. We want to maintain that every step along the way. God is good and He made this world good. So important. Secondly, we want to note that God transcends creation but also is present to it. We talked about this before,

but so God is outside of creation, right? Because He's larger than creation. He's more than creation. At the same time, He is present to every aspect. From the greatest thing to the most minute detail of creation, he's present to it. So he's both imminent, right? He's close to it and transcendent. Third, God upholds and sustains creation. One of the things we know that, yes, through God, all things exist. Fourth, God, all things exist. And in God, all things exist. So from God and for God, right, the origin and the purpose, but also they stay in existence in God. So God is sustaining all creation. Now these first main points, God creates an ordered and a good world, super important.

He transcends creation is yet imminent to it. He's close to it. He's present to it. He upholds and sustains creation. Then we're also going to talk if we were going to pivot in paragraph 302 and talk about the fact that God carries out his plan through divine providence. So we're going to talk today about divine providence. Like, what is God's will in this world? And it's going to be very, very important because we have not only the fact that God is the primary cause, right? God is the primary cause of all things. But also, the God allows there to be secondary causes, real secondary causes in this world. What I mean by that is, okay, there are things that God does directly. He is the primary cause.

He says, let there be light, boom, there's light. He doesn't need any mediator. He doesn't need any other thing. Yet, God chooses to use secondary causes, that is, you know, other creatures, to assist in creation and the governing of the universe. So, he can make the stars and the sun just by breathing them into existence. Or, he might use physical forces and particles to act according to the nature he gave them to produce the stars. And at the same time, God creates creatures,

beings that are free. I don't know, you might call them human beings, you might call them angels. But for our sake, here we are, human beings, who are created free. And God freely chooses to create these free beings and allows them to actually participate in his providence, right, in his creation, in his plan of salvation for the world in a free way. So we can say yes to God and we can say no to God. And so God actually gives us the dignity of being causes. And so we're gonna talk about that as well.

So all of those pieces we're gonna talk to, God creates a good and ordered world. God is transcendent to creation and yet present to it. He's imminent and transcendent. He upholds and sustains creation. He's active, right? In this, God is pure act. Also, his plan of divine providence is both he acts as the primary cause and allows there to be not just allows. He creates secondary causes and allows those secondary causes to be truly free, to cooperate willfully and even to cooperate unconsciously with his own

plan or to reject his plan. That's what it is to be free. You can do both. You can say yes and you can say no. And so as we begin this day, let's say a prayer and ask the Lord to come meet us so we can always say yes to his plan. We pray, Father in heaven, we thank you.

We thank you for this day. We thank you for creating this good world. We know that we broke it. We know that we broke it in our original sin. And you called us to live in this broken world as people with broken hearts. But you've also entered into this broken world. You are imminent.

You're present to us. You did not abandon us to the domain of death for you came in mercy to the aid of all. Come to our aid now with your mercy, with your love and with your divine providence. Help us to say yes to you this day and every day. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit, as I said, it is day 43. We're reading paragraphs 2.99 to 308. God creates and ordered and good world. Because God creates through wisdom, His creation is ordered. As the book of wisdom states, you have arranged all things by measure and number and weight. The universe, created in and by the eternal Word, the image of the invisible God, is destined for and addressed to man, himself created in the image of God, and called to a personal

relationship with God. Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of His creation, though not without great effort, and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and His work. Because creation comes forth from God's goodness, it shares in that goodness. And God saw that it was good. Very good. For God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted

to him. On many occasions, the Church has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world. God transcends creation and is present to it. God is infinitely greater than all His works. As Psalm 8 states, you have set your glory above the heavens. Indeed, God's greatness is unsearchable. But because he is the free and sovereign Creator, the first cause of all that exists, God is present to his creatures in most being.

As St. Paul says in the Acts of the Apostles, In him we live and move and have our being. In the words of St. Augustine, God is higher than my highest and more inward than my innermost self. God upholds and sustains creation. With creation, God does not abandon His creatures to themselves. He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act

and brings them to their final end. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to their Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence. As the Book of Wisdom states, For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made. For you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured if you had not willed it, or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living." God carries out His plan, Divine Providence. Creation has its own goodness and

proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created in a state of journeying, in statu vie, toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained to which God has destined it. We call Divine Providence, the dispositions by which God guides His creation towards this perfection. As the Second Vatican Council stated, By His providence, God protects and governs all things which He has made,

reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well. For all are open and laid bare to His eyes, even those things which are yet to come into existence to the free action of creatures. The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is concrete and immediate. God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history. The secret books powerfully affirm God's absolute sovereignty over the course of events. Psalm 115 states, Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases.

And so it is with Christ, Who opens and no one shall shut, Who shuts and no one opens. As the book of Proverbs states, Many are the plans and the mind of a man. But it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established. And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of sacred scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a primitive mode of speech, but a profound way of recalling God's primacy and absolute lordship over history and the world, and so of educating His people to trust

in Him. The prayer of the Psalms is the great school of this trust. Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our Heavenly Father who takes care of his children's smallest needs, as he states in Matthew's Gospel. Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat or what shall we drink? Your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Providence and Secondary Causes

God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out, he also makes use of his creature's cooperation. This use is not a sign of weakness, but rather a token of Almighty God's greatness and goodness. For God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles for each other, and thus of cooperating in the accomplishment of His plan. To human beings, God even gives the power of freely sharing in His providence by entrusting them with the responsibility of subduing the

earth and having dominion over it. God thus enables men to be intelligent and free causes in order to complete the work of creation, to perfect its harmony for their own good and that of their neighbors. Though often unconscious collaborators with God's will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, their prayers, and their sufferings. They then fully become God's fellow workers and co-workers for His kingdom. The truth, the God is at work and all the actions of His creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes,

as St. Paul writes to the Philippians, for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Far from diminishing the creature's dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by God's power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin. For without a Creator, the creature vanishes. Still less can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God's grace. Okay, so I told you there was a lot today.

We talked about this. We talked about the fact that God creates an ordered and good world, so good, right? Talks about that, even scripture attests, not only even scripture attests to this, but clearly our human understanding, in paragraph 299 says this, our human understanding, which shares

in the light of the divine intellect, right? Cause we're maybe in God's image and likeness can understand what God tells us by means of His creation, though not without great effort and only in a spirit of humility and respect before the Creator and His work. So there's this recognition that, as we've said many times before,

that we can grasp what God is revealing to us by means of His creation, but takes a lot of effort and we also have to have the proper humility and respect. And so there's this reality that here's the world that is ordered. In fact, the only thing that made science possible, I'm going from this order of the world to science, the only thing that made science possible was the Judeo-Christian vision of the world being created outside of God.

What I mean by that is that we realize that the laws of the universe are not capricious, right? It's not as if, you know, rain goes down because, because that's how God wants it. It's like, okay, God created the world according to certain laws, like gravity, like physics, like chemistry. And so because we realize and recognize in Revelation, that oh wait, wait, God is reason itself.

And in the beginning was the word was logos was reason that God is reasonable, right? God is reason, which means he's not capricious, which means that the world he created, he created according to certain laws. And that gave way, that paved the route for there to be such a thing as science because God creates an ordered and good world. Now we're gonna talk about the mystery of suffering tomorrow because we

realize as I said before God is good. He made this world good but then we broke the world. More on that tomorrow. God transcends His creation and is present to it. Again God is infinitely greater than all of His works. One of the things we need to understand at the same time he's so close. Remember what St. Augustine said, God is higher than my highest, right? He's so transcendent. He's also more inward than my innermost self. He's so imminent, right? So close to me. Continuing, God upholds and sustains creation. Remember, deism, we talked about these yesterday or the day before, the clockmaker God, that God made this world, but then he just wound it up and let it go, that's not what we're holding onto.

We're holding onto this with creation. God does not abandon his creatures to themselves. Not only does he give them being and existence, but also at every moment, he upholds and sustains them in being. It's so good. Not only that, enables them to act and brings them to their final end.

And that is realizing this should fill us with freedom and wisdom, joy and confidence, which is so important, right? That yeah, God is helping us. He's present to us. He's not so far. He's not distant from us. And lastly, the big section we have here is God carries out His plan, divine providence. And it's so good.

I mean, just to recognize paragraph 302 says, yes, creation has its own goodness and proper perfection. But it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. That the universe was created in a state of journey. So those people who would say that, yeah, this universe is growing, it's developing and even life on Earth, the theories of it developing, the way in which it was developed, yes, we don't know. I think there's some theories. That it's been developing is pretty clear. I mean, it's understandable. And the church says, yep, of course, while this creation has its own proper perfection, it did not spring forth complete. And that's okay. That's not just okay. That's reality. And that is wonderful. Because why? Because by his providence, God protects and governs all things that he's made. And so that sense of like even the process of the development of His creation is part of His plan. And not only is like, okay, here's, you know, the planet, the stars, the galaxies, all these things that are in process,

but even you and I. And that's remarkable, right? The fact that here's God who's a primary cause, like again, as I said at the beginning of this, he speaks and they were made. But also, he creates secondary causes with a destiny. He created you and I with a destiny in that sense of not fate, right, but destination, that God wants us to enter into relationship with him in the most perfect, most to relationship with him in the most perfect, most beautiful, beatitude way, right? And so we see in paragraph 304 that here is God's primacy and his absolute lordship over history in the world.

And he's wanting to educate his people to trust in him. Again, one of the key emphases of the story of scripture is not just God trying to get people to believe in him, but to believe that he exists, but to draw his people into a relationship of love. And how can love exist if trust isn't there? And so this story of God weaning our hearts back is the story of the Bible. And it's incredible, so much so that in paragraph 305 it says, Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our Heavenly Father who takes care of His children's smallest need.

That's so, so important. Now, I want to conclude today by just highlighting paragraphs 306 to 308. So important, because yes, we've said this many times today, God is the primary cause. And yet, to carry it out, God is the sovereign master of his plan. That's what it says in paragraph 306. But to carry it out, he also makes use of his creature's cooperation. And that use is not a sign of weakness,

but a token of Almighty God's greatness and goodness. Because he gives us not only existence, but also dignity of acting on our own, of being causes and principles for each other. And and thus cooperating in the accomplishment of his plan. So sometimes we cooperate unknowingly, unwittingly, and other times we cooperate knowingly by surrendering our hearts, surrendering our lives by deliberately entering into his plan. This is what it is to be a Christian, right? What it is to be a Christian is to say, okay, God has called me to pick up my

cross, deny myself and follow him. He has called me to love Him with everything I have and to love my neighbors as myself. God has called me to take care of the widow, the orphan, the poor, those neglected. God's called me to be true to my promises. God's called me to intercede on behalf of other people. Like all of these elements that God has called you and I to do, this is not just so you and I can be good boys and good girls. It is so that you and I to do, this is not just so you and I can be good boys and good girls. It is so that you and I can participate in his plan of redeeming the entire universe.

So when we say yes to the Lord, when we cooperate with his plan, when we trust in him, we're becoming causes. And again, I think it was Saint Augustine or some other big time saint who once said that, you know, we ask the question, why do we pray? What, prayer doesn't change God's mind. Then why would we do it in the first place?

And the answer is we pray because God hears our prayers and He grants us the dignity of being causes, which is true when it comes to prayer and it's also true when it comes to any decision you and I make in our lives. Like if we want to eat for the day, we have to go and get our food. We get to be causes. If Like if we want to eat for the day, we have to go and get our food. We get to be causes.

If we want someone else to eat for the day, we get to go and feed them, or give them the opportunity to get the food, right? Does that make sense? So this power, an incredible, incredible dignity that God gives us of being free and of cooperating, entering deliberately into the divine plan by our actions,

our prayers and our sufferings. Can you believe this? It's incredible. We can enter deliberately into the divine plan by our actions, our prayers and by our sufferings. I know that part of this community, this catechism in a year community, I know that there are people who are suffering today.

I know that people are suffering, you're in the midst of a season of suffering right now. And one of the things that Catechism is highlighting and reminding all of us is, yes, our actions matter. Our prayers, they matter. And our sufferings, they also matter. And it's incredible, incredible. We cannot attain our ultimate end without the help of God's grace, but God has given us the grace to act, to pray, and to suffer with Him. So my invitation is, if you're in the midst of suffering right now, know that you're not alone and know that it's not for nothing. Your suffering means something.

Your suffering does something. When you deliberately unite it to Jesus, it accomplishes God's providential plan for this universe. It matters because you matter. Because He made you. And He knows you. And He loves you. So I'm praying for you.

Please, please, please pray for me. When it's Father Mike and I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.