Creation

Refer to our Sunday Experience pages to find different prayers to pray as a family sometime during the week as well as setting up a prayer space and other activities as a family.

For the Learn do the following:

1. Watch Video at the top of the page. (if you want more resources, or are interested in learning more about the topic click on the Extra tab).
2. Click on the appropriate grade for your child.
3. Read the "relates to..." section at the beginning.  This is helpful to understand what to convey to your child is important about this lesson.  It will        help make the lesson both an intellectual and a lived lesson.
4. Read through and familiarize yourself with the sample script. 
5. Teach your child the lesson, either using your own words or the sample script.
6. Either discuss the questions with your child (best option), or have your child write out answers to the questions.
7. Have your child do the activities and/or do the activities with them.  
8. If working with a parish return the appropriate material in the way they have requested.

All Content for "The Way", Learn, is original content and copyright of the Diocese of Kalamazoo and may not be copied, reproduced, or used without prior written consent of the Diocese of Kalamazoo.   © 2020 Diocese of Kalamazoo

Relates to Jesus:  We were created in the image of God, and Jesus is the visible image of God.

Relates to my Faith:  Because we were created by God, we should love and honor Him.

Sample Script:

Did you know that you are a gift from God? You and me and every human that has ever and will ever exist is a gift from God. In the very beginning of creation, we read in the book of Genesis that after God created man, “God looked at everything He had made, and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31). This all happened on the sixth day of creation. When God made the sun and the stars and the earth and the plants and such during the first five days, He found these things to be good, but not very good like humans. Why do you think that is?

Earlier in the book of Genesis, we see why we are very good: “Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness… God created mankind in his image; in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:26-27). We are very good because we each are a reflection of the living God. We each are created special by God to bring His reflection into the world so that everyone we meet understands that they are created very good. God is a loving Father who freely gives us each the ability to receive love and to give love. He wants us to be like Him so that all can live a life full of love.

Being created in the image and likeness of God means that we are made up of with physical bodies and eternal souls. Our physical bodies are one part of our reflection of God that we share with the world. Our bodies allow us to experience the world around us, taking in God’s creation so that we can experience God’s love. Our bodies also allow us to give God’s love to those that we meet, showing others God’s presence by being kind and caring even when it be really difficult.

Our eternal souls make up the other part of us that reflects God. Our souls allow us to experience the things of God and appreciate them with greater fullness, things like love, goodness, beauty. Our souls lift our mind and heart to God in prayer and help us to communicate with Him. Here, our souls unite with God and lift both our body and soul to our Creator, helping us to love God as we realize just how much we are loved.

As we know, God loves all of creation and this love includes the angels, created spiritual beings that serve God as His messengers and assist Him with certain tasks. Angels are different than humans in that they are entirely spiritual and do not have bodies. While angels are seen with bodies in paintings and pictures, they were never bodily. Much the same, humans, having a body and a spiritual soul, we never become angels.

What does this mean for us? We are gifts, created in the image and likeness of God, and meant to both receive the love God has for us and to share that love with all that we meet so that others can experience the love of God in their life. We are made up of a body and a soul that reflect God’s presence to the world and allows us to realize the dignity that we have as His human creations.

Questions:

1. What did God call creation after he created humans?

2. In whose image are we made?

3. What two things make up a human?

4. What are the spiritual beings, that have no body, called?

5. Do we become angels after we die? 

Activities:

1. Draw a picture of God after he created everything, looking at creation and calling it very good.

2. Draw, or use clay, or some other method to depict what you would create if you were God.

Relates to Jesus: Our own creation points to Jesus' love for us, we were created to know and love Him.

Relates to my Faith:  God created us special, and so our souls and bodies both want to reach out and give back to God in love.

Sample Script:

As humans, we are created with a body and with a soul. Having a body and a soul puts us in the image and likeness of God and allows for us to encounter Him in our life through prayer and works of service shown towards others. God also made us in such a way that we can receive love from others and even experience God through other forms of His creation, in the plants and animals around us.

We are special in our body/soul make-up, as our body and soul are in the image and likeness of God. No other member of creation can say that, showing us how special we are in the eyes of God. Angels are special in their make-up, being created as pure spiritual beings that do not have a body. Because of their special make-up, angels are able to serve God as His messengers to interact with humanity in working to carry out God’s plans for creation. Each human, upon our own personal creation, is assigned a guardian angel who walks with us throughout our life to assist us and protect us. We should make an effort each day to pray to our guardian angel and ask God to give them the grace to keep us in His loving care.

One of the gifts of being human and knowing that we are loved by God who wants to be united in relationship with you and me is having the certainty that when we die, our soul leaves our body. While our body dies, our soul remains alive and awaits the day of the resurrection when all of our bodies will be reunited with our souls in eternity. This shows us again just how precious we are to God that even when we die, our body has tremendous dignity and worth. God does not want so special a gift to be taken from us forever and through the saving action of Jesus on the Cross, He conquered death so that our bodies won’t remain away from us forever.

So this really tells us a lot about the respect that we need to show our body and also the respect that we need to be showing towards one another. All human life is a gift from God and so we need to take care not to intentionally hurt, not be mean, and not make fun of anybody for any reason. God creates and loves each of us; we as children of God need to love and respect all that God created. This respect for creation extends beyond just humans too. God created the earth and the plants and the animals, and we need to take care of and respect these as well, allowing creation to be what it is intended to be.

What does this all mean for you and me? We need to be good stewards of our body and soul, which means we need to make sure that we take care of the gifts that we are. Taking rest, getting exercise, eating well, respecting our self and others, saying our prayers, helping others in need; these and so much more allow us to love what God has given to us. When we practice taking care of ourselves, it helps to take care of others and the rest of creation around us, being able to give and show respect in the way God has intended it.

Questions:

1. What are we created with? A _______ and a _________

2. In whose image and likeness are we created?

3. Why should we respect our bodies and others as well?

4. Who created all the animals, plants etc.?

5. Why is it important to take care of all of God's creation? 

Activities:

1. Draw what the world would look like if you created it.  

2. Write a prayer that you can pray asking for your Guardian Angel's help daily.  Pray it this week (and longer if you want).

Relates to Jesus: Jesus loves us and calls us to love Him in return by caring for creation. Our care for creation helps us to encounter Jesus in our lives.

Relates to my Faith: Man is called to respect and use creation for the good of all. Creation reflects God's presence among us.

Sample Script: As humans created in the image and likeness of God, we know that we are created out of the love of the Father. Because of this, we are called to reflect God throughout our life by living in His love and sharing that love to all those that we encounter and meet. Life is to be respected and protected for each of us, whether the unborn baby or the 100 year old who is near death and every person and situation in-between, the sacredness of life is a shared duty for all of us to uphold. Our shared responsibility to respect all human life is truly foundational to what it means to be human, yet often it is something that seems to be a struggle for people.

What are some things that we can do in order to eliminate some of this struggle? You and I can make a great effort, each day and each moment, to be Christian just as Jesus calls us to be. Now, this can sound like a big task, and it is, but I think it is easy to look at it in words and actions that we do everyday that we might not think about too often. Let me share a couple of examples that are helpful to understand what I am saying. First, we learn from a very early age the importance of being kind to one another. This kindness that we practice of speaking nicely to and about others, of sharing with and listening to others around us, and of helping people and their situations that are in need of attention is a fruit of the Holy Spirit that allows for the presence of God to be active in our lives. Kindness tells others they are worthy to be treated with much dignity and care and reminds others how God looks at them and desires Himself to be active in their lives.

Next, we need to be joyful, even when we don’t feel like being joyful, when spending time with those around us. When we are joyful in the presence of others, we allow others an opportunity to experience the joy that God has when He creates you and me. Joy tells the other person that they are respected and worthy of your best self and this leaves them fulfilled, knowing that they can participate in your experience of joy shared. Finally, we need to be loving towards others. Here, we mean a love that is respectful and shows concern for the other person no matter what is going on in their life. This general sense of love communicates the value of the other person and invites them into a community of self-giving by being themselves more aware of the other in their own lives.

Now, we are also called by God to have an appropriate love and respect for the created world around us. God gave us dominion over the animals and plants of the earth and desires that we respect these in appropriate ways. While we defend the invaluable reality of human life, we also care for and value the lives of animals by respecting their environments and such. We also recognize the order of humans over animals and how God gave us some animals for our nourishment and well-being and how often plants serve the same purpose for animals. This “circle of life” shows God’s order present in creation, how creation is to support one another, and thus gives us another reason for respecting creation at every level.

What does this lesson mean for us? You and I are loved and we are called to share this love. God created us and calls us to share in His creation through kindness, joyfulness, and authentic love. Our work with all of creation shows us the order in which God creates and assists us in experiencing Him throughout our life.

Questions:

1. Why does God create us?

2. What are some ways we can show kindness and joy to others?

3. How should we treat all of the creation God has given to us?

4. What lives are we supposed to respect?

5. What are things we can do to live as Christians (like Christ)?
 

Activities:

List some of your favorite animals or plants of creation, talk with a family member about how they fit into God's plan of creation.

Think of someone that has been mean to you, come up with a plan of how you can be kind to them.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus is Lord of Heaven and earth, of the visible and invisible. The disobedient angels (Satan and his demons) despise humanity because Jesus took on human form and placed humanity above the angels by taking on humanity as the Son of God. Jesus and His angels protect us from all the evil that would harm us.

Relates to my Faith:  We are the most beloved of God's creation; the height of both the physical and spiritual realm. We give God great glory when we act as such - loving God, loving neighbor and treating ourselves and others with dignity and respect.

Sample Script: Human beings are blessed to be made up of having a body and a soul. This body and soul that is given to us by God allows us to encounter and experience the world around us. As we go about our day-to-day lives, we come to understand that there is a physical world that we can come to know through our sense of touch, vision, and so on. We also come to realize that there is a spiritual world around us; an unseen world that communicates and interacts with us. Both the physical and spiritual worlds are real and play an important part in our daily lives.

As we know very well, the physical world is made up of the material; tangible things that we can touch and experience by studying and controlling. More often than not, we can come to know a great many things about the material world through the use of various sciences that allow us to explore the world around with some certainty. Our spiritual world, made up of the things that we cannot see, is more difficult to come to understand strictly through our senses and requires help from our Catholic faith.

The spiritual world, as we exist here and now in time, is made up of angels and demons. Both angels and demons are spiritual beings that are created by God. The angels are the messengers of God that work to bring about His word and will into the world. The angels serve God in different functions and roles. Most personal to you and I is the guardian angel who is appointed to us. This guardian angel works to keep us from harm and assists us in living the good and holy life God intends for us.

The demons are the angels who intentionally disobeyed God and actively choose against Him. These demons work against the will of God and seek to disrupt our relationship and communication with God. They want us to become like them; namely to be willful participants who choose against God and work to bring disharmony and disunion to the world.

This reality of the spiritual world is certainly scary but we do not need to be hopelessly afraid! We must remember always that God loves us and wants to be with us. He Himself desires a relationship with you and me, and sends His holy angels to protect us, as well as Saints to pray for us and a number of loving family and friends to be us to keep us safe and direct us on the right path in life. We need to do all that we can to say yes to God and all that He has to offer us, inviting Him into our life so that the demons and any power of darkness will stay far, far away from us.

What then are some ways that we can ensure that we remain in the safety of God? We need to go to Sunday Mass and receive Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Jesus has conquered sin and death, including all demons in the spirit world. They tremble at the name of Jesus and if we reverently and devoutly and sincerely receive Him into our heart and soul at each Communion… There is no better defense in any world, physical or spiritual. Centered in Jesus, which is supported by a life of daily prayer, reading the Bible as much as we can, following the Commandments, and loving those around us by doing acts of charity and service, the love of God will keep us safe and this love will come forth from us to assist in the protection of the world around us and bring more souls to the light that is Jesus Christ.

Questions and Activities

 1. The world is made up of both physical and _________.

2. What are angels?

3. What are demons?

4. How can we know more about the physical world?

5. What are ways we can stay close to God in the Spiritual world?

Activities

Depict a scene (in story, poem, art, etc.) where our guardian angel is protecting us from spiritual harm.

Create a list of ways you can explore God's created world.  

Relates to Jesus:  Jesus is Lord over all of creation, including the angels. Jesus came to save us from our sins so that all of creation might have a chance to be reordered to God and us as humans could live lives of holiness.

Relates to my Faith: We are called to live lives of holiness that are rooted in Mass, prayer, study, works of service towards others, which keep us close to God and focus our life on fulfillment.

Sample Script: We live in a world that is made up of both the physical and the spiritual. While there exists these two distinct realms, the physical and spiritual realities around interact with one another and make-up the created order around us. And just as we experience the world that we can see and touch, we can also experience the world we cannot see and touch. Both the physical and spiritual realms affect our lives and influence our journey in finding happiness and fulfillment in this life.

In considering the spiritual realm, we know that it is populated with both angels and demons. Angels are the messengers that work for God and assist Him in helping to guide and protect us in our lives. Demons are the angels that choose to disobey God and seek just the opposite of the angels; namely to lead humanity astray to make the same choice of disobedience that the demons themselves have. The spiritual realm, and the angels and demons that exist here, are as real as the animals and plants that we experience and are moving about us, often veiled from our vision. Angels (and thus demons as fallen angels) are created being like humans, but they are separate from humans, humans do not become angels at our deaths.

It is interesting, and perhaps a little scary, to think about, but in the spiritual realm there exists a very real battle of good and evil between the angels and demons. The battle that exists is ultimately for us; both sides of the angels and demons vying to bring us to their particular side. God’s angels, the good angels, operate in a way to keep our soul in the light of God. Again, angels are messengers and so their words speak love and goodness and truth to guide us to Jesus Christ and to keep us in the grace of God. The demons, the bad angels, operate in a more deceitful manner, seeking to encourage our soul to move away from the light of God and to follow our own desires over and above God’s or to even follow sinful desires. The demons use words that speak anger and incompleteness and lies to guide us in the way of the devil and a life of isolation apart from God.

You notice that I said angels and demons “speak words”. While they are messengers and certainly the messages that come forth from them can come to us as words in our mind or heart, these messages can also manifest themselves as inspirations or even feelings that could be either peaceful or unrestful. Whenever we receive such messages or inspirations in our mind or heart, we are best served to bring these first to God in prayer and pray to the Holy Spirit to show us the origin of this message. If we are intentional and patient in this request, God will show us from whom this particular message and inspiration is from.

We must remember that God and His angels love us and do not want to lose any one of us, knowing that Jesus conquered sin and death and all the demons. In fact God has given us each a guardian angel to help guide and protect us. These guardians do not want to go against our free will so we need to ask daily for their help. We need to always make the choice to follow God, to follow that which is loving, true, good, beautiful, peaceful, joyful (cf. Philippians 4:8-9), knowing that this is where God resides and seeks to have us live with Him. With God, we live our life of holiness that is centered in Him and keeps us close in His loving care.

Why is it so important to be aware of the spiritual realm? God created us out of His love, which shows us how much He is in love with us. He is so in love with us! The demons are jealous of this love and would do anything to hurt God by leading one of His beloved away. To know that God and His angels are fighting for us shows us just how special we are in God’s eyes. With this knowledge, we are inspired to live lives of holiness that put God in the center of everything that we do, so that we might always choose the good and avoid the evil and be the children of God who don’t go astray.

Questions:
What are the demons?

What are some ways that angels and demons might "speak" to us?

What is the role of angels?

How can we follow the good angels and ignore the bad demons?

Why do demons try to get us to turn from God?

Activities:

 Research what the nine choirs of angels that the Catholic Church names.  Draw a picture of these choirs of angels.

Take some time each day this week to ask your guardian angel for help and protection.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus, through His saving action of dying on the Cross, destroyed the distorted view that sin and death held over all of creation. Jesus availed humanity the opportunity to encounter God with renewed grace by being able to see all of creation with unveiled eyes; namely by having the ability to see the Creator's design in all.

Relates to my Faith: Signs of Intelligent Design exist all around us. The order, the harmony, the precision; these and many more examples throughout creation, especially in the human person, causes us to praise God for His gifts to us and recognize Him in worship.

Sample Script: As humans created in the image and likeness of God, we are called to share in the life of God. God’s love for us desires that we share in His love by living a life that is centered on His love. Opening ourselves to God through worship and prayer, allows us to come to know who God is and to experience His love for us. Coming to know who God is helps us to understand the care and concern that we need to have for our neighbors, showing them that God loves them and desires all to be in community with Him. Most interesting is that the more that we come to know who God is and are able to live a life centered in love, the more we grow in our own understanding of who we are as children of God destined for eternity.

There are many ways in which we come to know God in the world around us. While worship at Sunday Mass and daily personal prayer are most important and should be attended to often, the created world around us speaks of the presence of God. God’s creation carries with it the stamp of His love which allows Him to be experienced and encountered. Having this certain knowledge of the presence of God in our life and in the world around us provides for multiple ways in which we can communicate with God and grow in relationship with Him.

Let’s look at some of the ways that we can come to know God in our world around us. One of the ways that we come to know God is through beauty. Beauty finds its origin in God, meaning that the source of what it means to be beautiful begins in God. God Himself is harmonious and orderly, as beauty possesses within itself a certain harmony and order that attracts us, calling us to admire and praise the person or animal or plant. Beauty is seen also in our own creations of art, dance, music, athletics, and so on. Beauty tends to draw us in and capture our attention. We can each probably think of many examples of what is beautiful. Think of those things that you find to have beauty. What is beautiful about these? How do you see God in these things?

Another way that we come to know God is through goodness. Like beauty, goodness finds its origin in God. Goodness supports all that is holy and directs all things to God. The kindness shown between one person to another; the care shown towards your neighbor’s dog; hard work done to complete your homework… these and so many other examples build-up the practice of being good and virtuous (that pursuit of the good), which directs us to God and a life lived in holiness that brings you and me fulfillment and happiness both now and for all eternity.

Truth is another way that we come to understand and know God. And like beauty and goodness, truth finds its origin in God as well. Jesus reveals that He is the way and the truth (cf. John 14:6) and this reality is seen through the presence of truth in creation. All in this world that speaks reality and clarity tells us of the ways things are, which is a direct characteristic of who God is. God does not deceive; He is reality and so all that communicates this real reality by saying what is true offers us each a glimpse of God present among us.

What does this all mean for us? God is certainly present in our world, closely tied to you and me through creation and even within our very selves. The beauty, the goodness, and the truth we spoke of briefly in this lesson, these three things can each be seen within us. We find beauty in ourselves by looking at the order we possess in our body and see the symmetry with which we are put together. We find goodness in our heart and mind telling us to show love to our family and friends and encouraging us to be kind to others and to spread joy with our attention and smile. We find truth in the peace we experience from saying what needs to be said, even when it is difficult, especially when talking about our faith. God loves us and desires to be known. What a blessing it is knowing that we don’t have to go far to learn about Him.

Questions:

1. How can creation show us about God?

2. Where does goodness find it's origin, and why?

3. Where can we find God present?

4. How can truth lead us to God?

5. What sort of life does God desire we live, and why? 

Activities:

Either draw a scene from creation, or take a picture of a part of creation that you find beautiful.  

Write a paragraph about how that scene, image, or part of creation reminds you of God.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus coming as fully God and fully man built the perfect bridge to connect the Almighty God with sinful humanity. Jesus reminds us of our divine call to love and respect God, others, and all of creation while also reminding us of our utter need and dependence on the One who can save us.

Relates to my Faith: We are called to hold in balance the gifts given to us by God and how we use these gifts to in order to better my life, the lives of my brothers and sisters, and our relationship to God who gives because He loves us freely.

Sample Script: In the beginning, before there was anything, there was only God. God has existed for all eternity as a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as a community of love. This love shown eternally between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is endlessly reciprocated and shared perfectly in the Trinity.

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…” (Genesis 1:1). The Bible begins with earth’s birth. The perfect love of the Trinity brought forth a new creation. The love of God is so powerful that He was able to create ex nihilo, which is to say that God created out of nothing. God didn’t and doesn’t need any material to create; the power of His perfect love was able to bring about the heavens and the earth, and ultimately you and I.

The power of God’s love helps us to understand a couple things about God: first, the ability to create simply by willing creation from His love shows God’s infinite greatness over and above all of His works. When you and I make a batch of brownies, we create, needing to use materials such as eggs and oil and brownie mix; God creates heavens and earth and humans by simply loving them into existence through His most powerful will. Talk about true power; imagine how easy it is for Him to make brownies! Secondly, the power to create out of nothing via an act of His loving will truly shows how everything is created as important and with a purpose. The order with which God has placed within creation tells forth the love with which all things were created.

So even with the awesome creative power that God has and His infinite greatness above creation, which says that He could absolutely do anything that He wants to do, God freely chooses to do the most radical of things; He chooses to be intimately involved with His creation. God does not create and then leave us to fend for ourselves to live life, experience all that life has to offer, and then only to die. No, God inserts His love into all of creation so that His love can be experienced by all of us. This love is most profoundly evident in humanity, who being made in the image and likeness of God, not only participate in His love like the rest of creation, but can actually receive and give back this love to God and be a living witness to God by expressing His love to one another.

God’s walk with humanity is so intimate that it is often compared to in the Scriptures as a marriage between a man and a woman. God desires to have such a relationship with us that it can only be explained as a total self-giving of one to the other. The love shared in such a relationship yields only love that gives forth life that tends towards fulfillment both during our earthly existence and into our eternal home that is Heaven. As part of this fulfillment, man comes to understand that we have dominion over all of creation, not in some domineering way but in a way that is guided by love and order, just as God created it to be. Man’s loving relationship with God centers Him properly as a child of God while also brings him to understanding his role as steward over all of creation. This stewardship allows for creation to be cared for properly and to be utilized with respect. Being in right relationship with God and His creation is most pleasing to God, as it is here that man fulfills His vocation. God is praised and given great worship by man when he is living a life that upholds God’s plan for creation.

What does this all mean for us? God’s love for us reminds us of our value in God’s eyes and directs us in telling us how to be good leaders over God’s creation. A life lived in this fashion truly fulfills God's loving plan for us, the pinnacle and height of His creation. We must do all that we can to safeguard this way of life and to grow deeper and deeper each day to be in right relationship with God.

Questions:

1. What materials did God create from? 

2. We say that God created out of _________. (This is the reason He created)

3. True or False: God created like a watchmaker, setting creation in motion and then ignoring it.

4. We are made in God's ________ and ___________.

5. How are we called to take care of God's creation?

Activities:

List some ways that you can help be a steward of God's creation in your life (start with things in and around your house that you can do then move outward toward the community).

Use clay or other materials to create something in your image.  Write about how that is like and how it is different than God creating us.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus Christ gives us the gift of the divine life of grace so that you and I can live like Him and experience the love of the Trinity in our life.

Relates to my Faith: We must share the love we have received so that those that we encounter might also experience God and the life available to them within the Church.

Sample Script: God creates us each to have a life of love and fullness that is found in relationship with Him. God wants you and me to be fully alive in this life so that we can be the daughters and sons that He calls us to be for eternity right here and right now. The fullness that He desires for us to possess is just a participation of the true fullness that awaits us in Heave. A life lived in right relationship with God allows for a fullness in this life that is beyond anything else that we can experience in this life. Let’s talk a little bit about why this is so.

The fullness of Christian life, commonly referred to as living a life that is centered in Jesus Christ in faith and morals, allows us humans the opportunity to engage the maximum potential of our given gifts and talents and use these in the proper order during our lifetime. Aristotle, in the Greek philosopher's reflection on such things in life, spoke of the good life as one centered in on virtue. He called virtue that middle path which was neither deficient in a particular thing nor was it excessive; one’s particular possession of said thing was balanced or virtuous. A helpful example here might be one from the perspective of hunger. When you or I am hungry, and pizza is served, we eat the amount that fills us up, let’s say 3 pieces. If we eat 1 or 2 pieces, we are still hungry and thus deficient in satisfying our hunger. If we eat 4 or 5 pieces, we overate and have a stomach ache and thus excessive in satisfying our hunger. The 3 pieces of pizza satisfied the hunger and was thus the balanced or virtuous approach.

Our moral life is similar. We need to seek the balance or the virtuous approach to living this life. When God created us, He created us with a capacity to be full. Original Sin threw this off-balance however, allowing for excessive and deficient behavior to be all too easy to fall into. So, our life of faith and morals needs to reach out for and accept the grace of God to order and balance our life around the virtuous life. The question becomes though, “How?”. We live in such a culture that is full of and glorifies excessive and deficient behavior, and to make matters worse, it is often more difficult to walk the path of virtue. We certainly need assistance in living the virtuous life, so the question of how is a very good one indeed.

We need the grace of God for sure and we seek His grace through prayer, attending weekly Sunday Mass, and being active in receiving the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Living the virtuous life can be difficult and so seeking the grace of the Eucharist (to let the Son of God intentionally abide with us) and Reconciliation (asking for forgiveness and the strength to overcome our struggles against deficient/excessive behavior) are important pieces that are common pillars for the person seeking to live a virtuous life. We each need to call upon and seek the help of our guardian angels who are given to us by God to assist us in following God’s voice throughout our life. These angels protect us and help to keep the temptations of the demons at bay, strengthening us to adhere to the will of God. We each need to stay close to the Saints, the holy men and women upheld by the Church for living exemplary lives. The Saints, whether they be saints our family grew up with or saints that we have researched for a project or even our chosen saint for Confirmation, are guides that often overcame many trials and tribulations to achieve holiness. Their example is one that we can look to in our quest to live a balanced life. We need to also look to our loved ones, the holy family and friends that we have in our life who are doing their best to form their relationship with God and live a life centered on faith and morals, seeking the virtuous balance of what is required for a happy life.

God, in His loving care for creation, desires that the height of His creation, humanity, be happy and live a life that is full. The assistance of the created order around us, our guardian angel, the Saints, our family and friends, and even nature itself can help us to stay close to God and to inspire us to lead a virtuous life. The virtue of moderation or temperance allows us to partake in the good things of this earth that are licit or lawful for us according to God’s commandments. Moderation in all things protects us from overindulging in ways that can become harmful to us both in body and soul. A life of balance is an exercise of the virtue of moderation or temperance. When we live with this order, with this attempt towards balance, we find peace in our life which brings us to a place of true, authentic joy. By living a virtuous life, we give glory to God but also continue the work of living His creation for others to encounter. When another person sees the order by which you are living, you show God’s presence through your life and point to His existence in and around creation. The evidence of God's love in the created world, and having His creation respond to that love by living a life rooted in His love, allows all the created world to rejoice and sing praise to the One who gives life to all.

Questions:

1. What sort of life does God create us to have?

2. What does virtuous life mean?

3. How can guardian angels help us to live the life God created us to have?

4. What does it mean to have a life of balance?

5. How can the created world help us to see God and live the life He wants us to have? 

Activities:

Create a list of ways in which you live a virtuous life (one that is balanced not going too far or falling short of goodness).

Find a saint that you like and write a paragraph on how they lived a life God created them to live.

Relates to My Faith: I live in the world God created. God put me here to share in his love and to be a steward of his creation, to use the benefits of his creation for the good others and for myself in ways that are responsible always aware that all of creation is God’s gift to us, and the venue in which God has placed me to “work out (my) salvation in fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12).    

Catechism References: CCC nos. 279-384; CCC 2415-2418

 

Scriptural References: Gen 1:1-4:16, 5:2; Col 1:15-17

Related Videos:
Bishop Barron on Creation: Click Here for video (8 mins)  
Bishop Barron on Misreading the Creation Accounts of Genesis: Click Here for video (8 mins)
Archbishop Fulton Sheen on Angels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgcXBqRPl4U (24 mins)

Peter Kreeft on Angels and Demons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjGU4tvgayw (1 hr 12 mins)

Ascension Presents on Guardian Angels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bll1k4458k (12 mins)

Extra Narrative (For Further Study):

God has been around a long, long time. In fact, he’s been around forever. It is not difficult for us, as limited and finite creatures to conceive of the notion that we will be around forever, but we do have trouble with the idea that God (or anything for that matter) has been around forever before that. In other words, we can conceive of an infinite timeline going forward, but not backwards. Time, which is finite, exists within the reality of the infinite, and it is the perspective of how God might see us. 

In our last lesson, we saw that God creates out of love, not out of need, He doesn’t need our worship. He doesn’t need to be loved by us. He is not lonely. He is perfectly happy within his Trinitarian reality..He creates sheerly out of the desire to share the goodness and awesomeness of his infinite love of those he creates.

Because God has been around forever, it would be silly for us to think that he did not create before he created our own physical universe. When we consider God’s creation, we should remember that whatever we can conceive in our own “creative” thinking, God can create infinitely. This means his creations must also exist outside the limited box of our physical universe and our four-dimensional reality. 

One simple way to think of it is in terms of Dr. Seuss’ story, Horton Hears a Who. In this children’s story, the reader is made to look beyond the confines of our own world into the perspective of a world within a world. Though it is not Dr. Seuss’s intended purpose to point to the reality of God, he does tap into a truth, the truth of realities and dimensions beyond what we can perceive through our physical sense. He stops short of the next logical question, if it exists, then how did it get there?  The laws of the science (such as the Law of Entropy or the Law of Motion, or the Law of Conservation of Mass, etc) do not fit the accepted scientific theories in secular academia that explain the origin of the universe. To some degree, they explain the possibilities of the scientific processes, but they all stop short of answering that which brought the matter or the creative forces and those processes into being in the first place, and that, they cannot answer.  

So, when we consider God’s creation in Catholic teaching, we consider two major categories: the visible and the invisible creations of God. The visible creation consists of the physical universe that we can perceive through our five senses. The invisible creation consists of the spiritual creations of God that we cannot perceive through our five senses--though anecdotal stories of the intersection of those creations are plentiful (here, I refer to stories of angels, spirits, and Jesus’ own resurrection as a fraction of those examples).

But because God creates out of love, he did not create everything then leave his creation to its own devices like some divine clockmaker who winds up his clock and leaves it to its own working (the Deist view). Nor does God control events like an operator in an operations center coordinating births, deaths, accidents, and every event that occurs in each individual’s life like the Wizard of Oz.  Nor does He draw us in to some great lie for his own perverse entertainment like some ridiculous, limited notion of a laughing god in a cloud of gas in a Star Trek movie that we can race away from at warp speed. Rather, God, who by necessity, is greater than all of His creations, has infinite concern for all that He creates, and because He is infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, God, He is able to love each creature individually. Sure, He could control every movement in the universe if He so desired, but love demands a free will to choose or reject Him, and so, among the greatest of God’s gifts is the gift of our free will. This free will extends to all of God’s creatures, including that of the Angels, both good and bad.

The Angels

One of the mysterious creatures of God’s invisible creations are the angels. From the writings of St. Paul and other Sacred Scriptures, the Church teaches that within the invisible (to us) creations, exist the Angels who existed long before God created our physical universe. Angels were created as messengers and helpers of God. According to tradition, there are nine levels or “choirs” of angels. Which are actually organized into three spheres of three choirs each. In order of traditional hierarchy, these include, the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Each choir has its own unique role. Since all angels are spirits, and cannot reproduce or nurse babies, they are not differentiated by sex. Angels in many modern works of art and Christmas tree toppers are usually depicted with the features of human women, and while Angels can take different forms, including light (cf. Lk 10:18),  and have appeared on earth as reported in the Sacred Scriptures having taken human form, they are neither male nor female and were never human beings transformed after death as a reward for going to Heaven. Rather, each angel that God creates beholds the face of God from the moment of its creation, and, according to traditional teaching from St. Thomas Aquinas, each Angel is even its own unique species! In their natural state, they are awesome and even fear-inspiring creatures,who function primarily as messengers and helpers of God.

Jesus himself mentions the reality of angels in the Gospels in Mt 18:10; 22:30; and 26:53. It is an archangel that announces the births of John the Baptist and Jesus and who appears to Joseph in two dreams throughout the first chapter of Luke  It is angels that stand beside the empty tomb of Jesus in John 20:12, and appear many times throughout the Scriptures in both testaments. It is implied in Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18:10 that each person has their own personal guardian angel. Traditional teaching has it that nations, cities, churches, and families are all thought to have guardian angels.

Additionally, angels live in a different dimension in which they can see us and move in and out of our physical universe. Because they are spirits, they are not bound by the physical universe. When we depart from this life, in our souls and spirits, and at the end of time when we will receive our glorified bodies, Jesus’ resurrection teaches us that we will have many of the same capabilities--assuming we live lives worthy of life with God in Heaven.  

The Bad Angels

Tragically, Scriptures and Jesus himself teaches us that a third of the angels were cast out from heaven for rebelling against God (Cf. Rev 12:4), The seraph, Lucifer, (the name means, “Lightbearer”) traditionally was the most intelligent and most powerful of all the angels. However, his gifted attributes led to sinful pride and ultimately rebellion. Jesus states in Luke 10:18, that he “saw Satan fall from the sky like lightning”. Atheist-based modern science has rejected the reality of the spiritual world as medieval superstition, yet the evils in the world and its coordinated power in the world all attest to the reality of a spiritual intelligence that goes well beyond human understanding. It is well-known that one of the oldest techniques of the demonic is to work disguised as good, in hiddenness, as glamorous, and as very attractive to human nature. This is why Jesus warns us not to judge by appearance and why we must prayerfully discern all things. Yet, how prevalent is it that most people judge by appearance, thus allowing evil to enter into and influence all our human endeavors. To combat the fruits of evil, we must know, understand, and be able to recognize the fruits of evil, and in contrast, the fruit of the Holy Spirit (cf. Gal 5:20-22). Even as good angels function in the world assisting and influencing human beings to do good, God allows the bad angels to also wander the world and influence human beings in ways that require us to actively reject evil and choose the good. When we choose the good over evil, we give glory to God and bring merit upon ourselves.

The Creation of Humankind

We read in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis that God created humankind in his Divine Image and differentiated us into male and female with physical bodies and eternal souls and spirits (our bodies house the soul, if you will, and the soul houses spirit). The fact we are created in God’s image by him and for him with an eternal destiny to be with God and share in the eternal joy of his divine love gives human beings infinite dignity, and thus each life from the moment of our human conception we are God’s. As St. Paul teaches, we are not our own, we do not belong to ourselves. Rather, we have been purchased at the cost of the suffering and death of Christ (cf. 1 Cor:6:20). By extension, our infinite dignity lies in the fact that God loved us enough to send his son to die for us that we might have eternal life (cf. John 3:16). If God did not care about or love us, he would never have bothered. We exist because God exists. If God did not exist, we would not exist. It is God’s very being that sustains everything that is.

In Colossians 1:16, we read that God created all things in Christ and for him. This is consistent with the opening lines of the Book of Genesis where we see the Holy Trinity at work together in working of creation. We see in the first account of creation (Gen 1:1-2:4a) that there is order to the universe. The story has a rhythm and pattern in which as each portion of the universe and earth are created, it is pronounced, “good” by God, until mankind is created, and then God pronounces it, “very good”. So we see in this first account, that as God creates, he is doing so in an increasing hierarchy of being where mankind is the crown of his creation, and is given a share in his divine powers. 

In the second account of creation (Gen 2:4bff), we get the specifics on the creation of mankind which the human author call Adam (adamah--which literally means, “from the ground”) and Eve (mother of all the living) into whom God breathes life. We interpret this story as an etiology (a story of origins) and are not concerned about its literal specifics (nor do we deny them or simply throw them into the category of useless, fabricated myth). Rather, the Church understands that the divine author used the instrumentality of a human author through the process of inspiration (in-breathing) to provide an important story that teaches us about the infinite dignity of man created by God himself, and even after falling by being disobedient to God, he still continues to show his love and providence for them by providing for them a Remedy (Gen 3:15). The story makes clear the radical destruction and disorderedness that sin brought upon God’s creation, not just the separation of all mankind from God, the physical death and illnesses that mankind will now have to suffer, but a radical disharmony in the universe itself. Yet, the story does not end on a tragic note, but with a promise, the promise of a Savior, a Messiah, who would one day restore all back to God beginning with us. 

There is much more the creation accounts tell us which we will cover in other lessons, but one of its more important teaching points is that everything God has given us demands a response of gratitude. This is perhaps one of the reasons God allows Adam and Eve to fall. Throughout the story of Adam and Eve, one never gets a sense of the gratitude they owe to God. It is completely absent from the narrative. It is this lack of gratitude that condemns Satan. God gave Adam and Eve everything, but now Satan stirs in them a desire for more. “You shall be as gods.” The irony is, they already were. Our response must be one of gratitude and a spirit of cooperation with God’s grace. It is not because God needs it--the Adam and Eve story never even brings it up--but because justice demands it. We can never give God what we owe him. God knows this, but he looks on us as a loving parent looking upon their child offering little nothings to them because of its affection and love it has for its parents. The parent does not even consider the value of the child’s offering, but simply looks upon the child with love. This is how God is with us. If the child completely and consistently ignored its parentsas it grew up, not even talking to them while continuing to live under their roof while the parents fed, clothed, sheltered and loved it. A great injustice would occur that demanded not only a severe rebuke, but a casting out at some point to bring justice to the situation. We need to ask ourselves, am I the child that is given everything but offers only spoiled ingratitude, indifference, or even insult in return to all that God has given me? 

All Content for "The Way", Learn, is original content and copyright of the Diocese of Kalamazoo and may not be copied, reproduced, or used without prior written consent of the Diocese of Kalamazoo. 2020