stamina to give you a sermon to equal them in length, and you couldn't take it,
SERMON 223A
ON THE BEGINNING OF GENESIS
AT THE EASTER VIGIL
Date: 3991
God created heaven and earth in the beginning through the Word
1. We have heard many divinely inspired readings, and I don't have the stamina to give you a sermon to equal them in length, and you couldn't take it, even if I did.2 So to the extent that the Lord allows, I wish to speak to your graces about the very beginning of the scriptures, where we heard when it was read, that in the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gn 1:1). Concentrate for a moment, and think of the one who did the making. But I know that you are unable to think of the one who did the making;3 so think instead of what he made, and praise the one who made it.
In the beginning God made heaven and earth. Just look, the things that have been made are to hand, they can be looked at, they give pleasure. The work is plain to see, the workman is hidden; because what one can see with is also plain, and what one loves with is hidden. So when we see the world and love God' what we love with is obviously better than what we see with. We see with our eyes, we love with our minds.
So let us inquire, if you are agreeable, when God made such an enormous mass as the universe, what machines he made it with. The machine he makes with is the word he commands with. Why be surprised? It's the work of the Almighty.4 So if you inquire who made it, God made it. If you inquire what he made, he made heaven and earth. If you inquire by what means he made it, he made it through the Word, which he did not make.
This Word, through which heaven and earth were made, this Word was not itself made. I mean, if it was made, through what was it made? All things were made through it (Jn 1:3). So if whatever has been made was made through the Word, the Word itself, clearly, through which all things were made, was not made. One more point: the narrator of the works of creation, God's servant Moses, says In the beginning God made heaven and earth. He made heaven and earth in the beginning. By what means did he make it? Through the Word. Did he also make the Word? No; well what, then? In the beginning was the Word